Mera Pehla Pehla Pyar fame actor revisits rom-com genre after 14 years for Nigerian offering
Ruslaan Mumtaaz
Fourteen years after he tugged at the heartstrings of young teenage girls with Mera Pehla Pehla Pyar, Ruslaan Mumtaaz is set to revisit the romantic-comedy genre with Netflix’s Namaste Wahala. While the Valentine’s Day release was canned by the actor “without any baggage or expectations”, he admits to getting cold feet as D-day approaches. “I was approached for this film a year ago, and was told that it would be shot in Africa, with an African crew. I sought to have a unique experience, and work with a different set of people. Now, my friends across the globe are excited to watch it, and I [am questioning] the things that I have done. Had this been a Bollywood film, I would’ve trained for six months, and followed a diet. In this case, I was eating and enjoying the night before a scene that required me to bare my body,” says the actor.
Apart from the fact that he has found favour in the genre, a big draw for Mumtaaz was the chance to collaborate with North East fame actor Ini Dima-Okojie, and veteran star Richard Mofe-Damijo (RMD). “They are the Deepika Padukone and Amitabh Bachchan of [the Nigerian] film industry. I wanted to be an able representative of the Hindi film industry. RMD is a national heart-throb,” says the actor adding that his suggestions, including one to change the name of his character from Rajesh to Raj to give “their audiences a slice of Bollywood”, was appreciated. “I also have songs-and-dance sequences.”
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Mumtaaz promises that the subject of interracial romance — a picky subject for Indian parents, even today — has been sensitively dealt with “Educated families view the issue from a progressive lens. In the film, the girl is a lawyer, and the guy, an investment banker. The parents have encouraged their kids to pursue their dreams. In every culture, men decide [women’s fate], and women today are standing up against that norm. This film is a rom-com, expressed from the female point of view.”
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