hat must it be for a little boy to be the only actor on the sets of his first film? His friends and foes on screen — Bagheera, Baloo, Raksha or Shere Khan — were puppets on the sets, before animation and live action in post-production brought them alive.
Twelve-year-old Neel Sethi — even younger at the time of the shooting — says that his lifeless co-actors amid blue screens and green screens were a bit difficult to handle initially. With no acting experience prior to this, Sethi, however, with a little help from director Jon Favreau, had that one vital thing that can create magic out of nothing. “I had to use a lot of my imagination,” he says, seated at a conference room of a five-star hotel in South Mumbai. “Sometimes Jon used to step in and get into the puppet, and the interaction would get so much easier.”
A New Yorker by birth, Sethi would have little in common with most Indian kids his age. He likes camping, is already into F.R.I.E.N.D.S and can’t remember the last Bollywood movie he has saw.
He tells me that he caught the India-Australia match on Sunday night. He says that he plays or watches cricket with his cousins only when he is visiting his maternal grandparents in Mumbai. But this time it’s different.
As the Indian-American kid who plays Mowgli in the new Jungle Book movie, to revisit India for promotions before it releases on April 8 is a symbolic homecoming. “India calms me down. I love the food here, mangoes, dosa, paani puri, and I play cricket whenever I’m here,” he says.
Surprisingly articulate for his age, Sethi, however, doesn’t seem to grasp just how big it is to have one’s name to appear in the credits alongside Ben Kingsley (voice of Bagheera), Bill Murrey (Baloo), Idris Elba (Shere Khan), Scarlett Johansson (Kaa) and Lupita Nyongo (Raksha). He talks about hanging out with Murray like they are friends, as in the movie. “When we were at Martha’s Vineyard, Bill and I played American football, ate briskets and lobsters, and had a lot of fun.”
Besides his naïveté, this off-handedness also comes from the fact that Sethi doesn’t harbour dreams of becoming an actor. He is just too young to decide a future profession for himself. “I may get into dentistry, like everyone in my family. I mean, who doesn’t like the idea of being a movie-star? Maybe I can be both,” he says, agreeing to my suggestion that he can perhaps also try out the option of playing a dentist in a movie.
Considering how important the casting of the actor playing Mowgli was, over 1,000 boys were auditioned across USA, the UK, Canada and New Zealand. This is what casting director Sarah Finn, quoted in Wikipedia, had to say about Neel, “The heart, humour, and daring of the character. He’s warm and accessible, yet also has intelligence well beyond his years, and impressed us all with his ability to hold his own in any situation.” But until his teacher in school suggested his name for the auditions, Sethi hadn’t even watched the animated musical, The Jungle Book (1967), let alone reading the book. His recollection of the audition is as whimsical as is possible only with a 12-year-old, where a hotdog tops the priority list. “I was really hungry at the time and was looking forward to the hotdog they had promised to feed us. It was really cool to eat the hotdog. I didn’t know how big the movie was. When I saw the posters of some of my favourite movies inside the Disney Studios in Los Angeles, I felt that it would be nice to get the role. I tried my best and they liked me.”
The Jungle Book releases on April 8.
