Actor Freida Pinto joins Cheddar News to discuss her latest role in the Regency-era movie, 'Mr. Malcolm's List.'

Between Bells

Actor Freida Pinto Talks Diversity Within New Film 'Mr. Malcolm's List' 

Welcome back to between Bells, everyone set in the 19th century in England, a young woman helps her dearest friend by courting a mysterious wealthy suitor, Mr Malcolm after previously discovering he has a list of qualities required for his future wife. Things get complicated quickly. We sat down with the star of the film, actor Frieda pinto to discuss why she took on this regency era role and what the film has to offer, take a look. First of all, I'm very excited about this film, I had to watch it on my laptop and I can't wait to see it in the theater because I feel like it's an incredibly different experience, but I'm just so excited about this film and was from the start of this trailer, wondering if you could share more about your character. Selina? Yes, absolutely. Selina Dalton is a girl from the countryside and um she is, she's a girl with a lot of responsibilities, she's the oldest of many kids and in society back then um it was so important that the oldest child always married into a good family so that the rest of the siblings were always taken care of, you know, there was always that kind of societal pressure on women and in all of these pressures that Selina's feeling she's really not having a lot of um um spice in life, you know, she's kind of like missing out on life a little bit. And so when Julia Thistle, wait, her best friend from childhood friend invites her to London um um to kind of spend time with her, she doesn't realize she's walking into one of Julia's schemes, Julia is always full of ideas and she's she has a scheme and she needs to bring in a friend to help her out with the scheme. And through the scheme which Selena very reluctant, reluctantly becomes a part of. She really ends up having a new lease on life, She discovers herself, she discovers love, she discovers the joys and lows and pain that come with love as well, and the thrill that comes with it. And I really feel like that sends Selena on her journey of coming into her own and her own growth path. Um it's just such a lovely film about love and um and wit and humor and self respect and self love and I hope that the female characters specifically in this film really speaks to women today, because there's a little bit of a little bit of everything, you know, and like the modern woman will have something to relate to when they see Julia and Selena walk through society. Absolutely, I was thinking the same thing as I was watching it. And the story behind the story is also really incredible. This started out as a novel, it got turned into a podcast, then it became the short film that you were also in before becoming this feature length film. So, wondering what you initially thought when you first saw the script and how it feels to bring this to life for the big screen on that feature length level. Yeah. So when I first read the script, I my my dear friend Laura Lewis is one of the producers of this film, presented it to me and she told me that they were trying to um do a short film as a proof of concept because the director is the first time director but very, very talented and accomplished in her own way. And she has this idea. She just watched Hamilton's and she's very inspired by it and I loved Hamilton's. So when she brought up that reference, I was like, oh that is genius and that's very interesting, I want to hear more. So I spent some time with Emma chatting about the film and how she saw it. Um and she said that she really wanted London in this movie to look like London today, but with the costumes and the mannerisms of the past, you know, the regency time. And really another thing that this film does is it really marries two of my favorite genres, which is one of the regency period drama genre with the nineties rom coms, which I love. It was really a marriage of the two. Um and so immediately I kind of like jumped on the opportunity and I said, yes, I absolutely want to be part of it because the other thing is um You know, for for years we've been seeing period films just being told by white skinned people almost making us believe that we did not exist in that time. You know, where were we? Like? We just just came popped popped up from nowhere like the 20th century. Like what, what happened to the 19th century? Why are we not in any of the stories or if you're in the story is why we always, you know, um people in the background, you know, why aren't we telling our stories front and center. Um and in this fictional piece of work, we get to fall in love. We get to make mistakes. We get to have a journey of self growth and and and these attributes and um, and kind of emotions that are assigned to us are normal. They're not a trend, you know, so for me this feels like a real um a kind of not a movement really, but it just feels like really exciting because from going on from here on we are normalizing seeing people of color fall in love with each other as in a movie. I was about to say the same thing. It's so um atypical, It's not normal for us to see two leads of color, especially in a romantic comedy like this set in the regency era. What kind of change do you hope follows this after? I love that you said normalizing this especially with period dramas. But what do you hope to see in terms of representation moving forward? Because I think it's so important. Yes. And I think in general not just in period dramas for sure because that has been massively just you know, told from the white perspective, but even in like contemporary stories, we want to see people of color falling in love with each other and I can like you know share with you that every in the past, every time I would get cast and maybe as a romantic lead or as a lead um I would constantly hear agents and executives, studio execs say something like oh we need to balance it out by having a white person play opposite her. And that was the idea of balance and there could be nothing more wrong and false about calling that balance because how is that balanced? It's just your idea of how you see the world and the world doesn't really look like that. Um so so I hope going forward people are not stuck in um this kind of misconception or you know, they're wrong reading of what is normal because what is normal is how we see the world when you step outside, you see people of all at least you know, think of new york city or London and this film is based in London, you see people of all races and ethnicities and you hear all all different languages when you're walking down the street and accents. So I think it's really important that we start seeing movies that are more representative of the world, so well said thanks to actor Frieda pinto. The film Mr Malcolm's list is in the theaters now.