Charlie McSpadden on producing ‘A Nice Indian Boy,’ part 2

Charlie McSpadden's (Trinity '10) new film "A Nice Indian Boy," which he co-produced, released in theaters across America on April 4th, including the AMC Southpoint. The Chronicle talked with McSpadden about his time at Duke, his career, his experience making "A Nice Indian Boy" and his advice for aspiring creatives.

The Chronicle (TC): Tell me about your current project, “A Nice Indian Boy.” What was the inspiration behind it? What has it been like working on this for as long as you have, and what's been your favorite part of this process?

Charlie McSpadden (CM): When I got to Levantine Films, where I've been working for almost seven years, I made it my mission to find a romantic comedy that has gay leads and lives in the lineage of a movie about family too. At the time, there had not been a gay romantic comedy that a studio had financed. Since then we've had a couple. But at the time, it hadn't been done. And that came from a desire of wanting to see myself reflected in this genre that I really love. And wanting to find something that pushes the conversation forward just slightly. And I also wanted to find a great story. 

I read this play by Madhuri Shekar that was brilliant and exactly what I wanted. From there, she said ‘I shouldn't be the one to adapt this. I think you should find a queer male to write this.’ I met with this amazing writer, Eric Randall a couple months after that when he was on the precipice of proposing to his longtime boyfriend, and they were going to plan a religious ceremony. The [movie’s] script grapples a lot with how, as a gay couple, you can find yourself in a tradition that has excluded you in many ways, especially with the traditional form of Indian wedding. Randall really gravitated towards that. And when I first read the play and as I was developing it, I connected it with my own identity and also with my older sister who had this long relationship with her Indian American college boyfriend. He became a brother to me and my other sister and that was really the first time as a teenager where I really understood sort of what romantic love was. Because you never really think about your parents and go like, ‘Oh, they're in, like, romantic love,’ you need an outside perspective. So I felt that connection to the material, both in my own identity and also through [my sister] grappling with when she met [her boyfriend’s] parents, thinking ‘Am I going to be accepted? Because I'm a white girl, and this is an Indian family.’ The play plays with all those ideas of gender and sexuality and how families change and evolve when a new person comes into the family dynamic. 

In terms of what has been the most joyous part of the process of shooting the film, the whole film process was very fun. We were in Vancouver and shot very quickly in May and June of 2023. Some of it was very stressful as we shot during the writers strike and we were up against the actors' strike. Karan Soni, our lead, is in "Deadpool" and that movie picked the end of June, right before the actor strike was supposed to start, to have every single person be in this one scene. So, when we set our schedule, Soni had to go shoot "Deadpool" in London, and we had to cut a week off our prep and shoot six day weeks, Monday to Saturday. Although it was very stressful and very crazy, being there and witnessing this movie come to life that I'd been working on for, at that point, four plus years, it really reminded me why I do this work, why I labor over all those scenes and go, ‘No, we have to have this scene, and we can cut that out.’ There’s also such joy when you hire great actors who not only embody the characters but bring something else to it. We had amazing improv actors. Zarna Garg, who plays the mom in our movie, had never been on a set before. She didn't know what her mark was, and watching her, like, on day one go, ‘What's a mark? Where's the light?’ And by the end of that first week, she was going toe to toe with Jonathan Groff. Peter Kim, who plays the messy best friend, was so funny. He was saying the craziest improvised things on set. 

TC: What do you hope to work on next?

CM: Well, we just shot Maude Apatow's directorial debut, "Poetic License," that we're very excited about. We’re figuring out the path for it, it’s possible that we might be playing some festivals later this year. I've been looking for an intergenerational comedy which that film speaks to. We are hoping to close the deal on this new book, which is a lightly sci-fi action comedy. As a creative producer, you don't want to always repeat yourself. It’s always exciting when you find something that really speaks to you and that's in a new genre, that lets you flex a different muscle. I really, really, really want to make a comedy that's in the vein of “The Birdcage” or "Mrs. Doubtfire" or “Sister Act”, anchored by a huge comedic performance but still managing to tug at your heart. I've been looking for something like that but I haven't found it.

TC: Do you have any advice for Duke students who are interested in working in either the film industry or the creative arts industry more broadly? 

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