Jonathan Groff, Karan Soni on ‘A Nice Indian Boy’ Bollywood inspired scenes

Sometimes things get wet on a first date.

“It’s a rite of passage to have Mr. Groff spit in your face, as people should know,” A Nice Indian Boy star Karan Soni tells Entertainment Weekly.

Directed by Soni’s real-life partner Roshan Sethi, the queer love story follows reserved doctor Naveen (Soni) and as he meets and falls in love with photographer Jay (Jonathan Groff). They have a wonderful meet-cute when Jay is hired to take photos of the staff at Naveen’s hospital, but their first date is not a massive success. After their movie date, Jay explains how he was adopted by an Indian family, a conversation that ends with Jay breaking out into a performance of the massive Bollywood hit “Tujhe Dekha To Yeh Jana Sanam.”

Given Groff’s musical talents, giving him a moment to sing was a no-brainer, so Rashan Sethi and Karan Soni did a rewrite to include the memorable musical moment. They gave the actor a daunting task when writing the song from the Bollywood film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) into the script. Looking back, Soni remembers the background actors’ reaction to Groff’s rendition. “We had all of these brown extras on that street because we were shooting in an Indian part of Vancouver,” he says. “It’s such an iconic song that a lot of them broke character [when he started singing] and just had their jaws on the ground.”

Soni did not break in the scene — even after he got some spit on his face courtesy of Groff. “During one take, he was so close to me, and I got some pellets of his saliva. He was like, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and I was like, ‘No, I was secretly hoping that this would happen,'” he shares with a laugh.

Leaving London after filming Doctor Who, Groff spent his flight to Canada preparing for the musical number. Initially, the scene included Kumar Sanu’s part of the song, but after watching DDLJ for the first time in the air, Groff loved the music enough to learn more than what was scripted. “I rarely ever do this, but I was like, I’m just gonna go off at the end of this and surprise everyone with the length of which I’m gonna sing to make it really awkward,” he explains. “It was as strange as it feels in the movie.”

As a result, the final scene included him singing Lata Mangeshkar’s part as well — the high notes A Nice Indian Boy viewers will leave the theater remembering. “It was the funniest thing in the world, and we had never spoken about it,” says Sethi. “I was like, ‘This is the most theater kid insane thing that I’ve ever seen in my life. My first instinct was sheer terror; then, I was obsessed with it. Every cut of the movie contained it.” There was no time for rehearsal, so both the film’s director and Soni were just as surprised as the extras in the scene.

“I always say about Jonathan that people don’t understand how good he is at comedy because to do something that broad, it’s such a swing for the fences, and for it to land is the hardest thing in the world,” Sethi says.

The heart and humor of A Nice Indian Boy stems from its cultural authenticity, so the movie doubled as a learning experience for Groff. “The humor came from such a deep cultural place. I knew nothing about Indian culture, so I learned some cultural things and the authenticity of the writing and performers. It’s why this movie sings,” Groff says.

Like Jay’s DDJL performance, Naveen’s proposal toward the end of the film is another nod to Bollywood, as he splices himself into a scene from an Indian movie. “I love recreating the Bollywood sequence because some of the acting in those movies is considered bad for Hollywood because it’s over the top, but I love Telenovela-style acting,” Soni says about the romantic scene.

Sethi highlights Naveem’s visual transformation: “He’s supposed to go from someone who’s in a white coat, sterile, practical and cynical to wearing Indian clothing and dancing.” The turning point is when he performs his own Bollywood numbers and proposes to Jay, a public display of love that would be impossible for the person we meet at the start of the film.

A Nice Indian Boy maintains its balance of comedy within the poignant romantic moment courtesy of Naveen’s “horrible” wig in the scene. “I told everyone it was my real hair, and it looks so bad. People were trying to be nice about it,” he recalls. “It was really fun, but the actual getting on one knee for like five, six hours in that outfit was, just all of it was humiliating.”

Art intimating life with Soni and Sethi being real partners is what makes A Nice Indian Boy so magical, according to Groff. “This movie, in some ways, feels to me at least like an epic gesture of love that is about the love they have for each other and when [Naveen] was melting and starting to learn how to put his heart on the line it felt like there was a special authenticity to that gesture,” he explains.

“It’s the most personal job that me or him have ever done, and the fact we got to do it together is so special,” Soni adds about working with Sethi.

There’s an added significance for Soni, who says he was discouraged from being his authentic self earlier in his career. “They were like, ‘You’re Indian, and you’re gay. You can’t have both. You get to pick one,’” he shares. “This was the first role where both were allowed to come to the surface. Both parts of me, and that’s what the job required. That feels very progressive and amazing that it happened in my career and lifetime.”