UnIndian: Brett Lee on the unlikely leap from cricket to romcom heart-throb

The phrase “golden boy” might have been tailor-made for Brett Lee. The Australian cricket great is in Sydney promoting the launch of unINDIAN, his debut as lead actor in a feature film. He sits in a chair alongside the film’s director Anupam Sharma – 185cm of laid-back charm, easy smiles and a wave of bright, blonde hair. He seems completely nonplussed by the fact later that evening his acting chutzpah will be at the scrutiny of Australian audiences for the first time. Lee admits it was “weird” seeing himself on the big screen. It will be “weird” for audiences too, so used to seeing him in a baggy green on the cricket pitch, and more recently suited up as part of Channel Nine’s cricket commentary team. In the film Lee plays Will, who teaches “Aussie English” to foreign students (phrases like “take a slash”). His best friend is an Indian Australian called TK (played by Arka Das) and at Holi festival he meets Meera (Tannishtha Chatterjee), a single working mother who throws coloured spice all over his white jacket – a foreshadowing of how messy and beautiful his life is about to become. Nice guy Will is not a huge departure from nice guy Brett, and the former fast bowler turns in – to use a sporting cliché – a solid performance as romantic lead. He sits at Vinnie Jones, or Lebron James in Trainwreck end of the good spectrum, rather than at the whose-idea-was-this-anyway Shaquille O’Neal in Kazaam end. Sharma doesn’t shy away from admitting Lee, who is hugely popular in India (more so than any other Australian cricket star), was cast because he would “package the film right”. And having worked with him on a few Bollywood cameos and television commercials, Sharma says he’s long been acquainted with Lee’s creative side. “He’s a consummate professional and all the discipline from cricket, all his years of music training, his love for India, his love for diversity – they just made my job as a director easier.” Lee is not afraid to draw the connections between sporting life and acting, and makes the comparisons so convincingly you can begin to wonder why there hasn’t been more successful athlete-to-actor transitions (despite the history of wooden film and television cameos that would indicate otherwise). “Cricket’s made up of 11 individual players that are all playing in a team environment,” he says. “It’s the same as when you’re on set. You’re an individual actor but you’re working towards a common goal.” He says his two decade long cricket career taught him how to back team-mates up. “I know how to work in bowling partnerships, I know how to work off the other actor and try to help the other actor to get their right scene, as vice versa they did with me.” He borrowed a lot of his natural confidence from the cricket field – “nets to the sets” Sharma would joke during the shoot, he says. First day of the shoot, Lee strode up to Sharma and asked where his trailer was. He says he was “taking the Mickey. Big time!” As it turned out he did, in fact, have his own personal trailer. “I can’t have a trailer! That’s not right,” he said, although admits it came in handy when he needed to rest. If success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration, no one can fault Lee for not fulfilling the latter. Every morning he arrived on set before sunrise and would “become” Will. He tried to never break out of character between takes, asking all his co-stars to call him Will, and learned vocal warm-up techniques he has continued to use in his other career, after playing, as a cricket commentator. Then there was acting – or “not acting”, as his coach Kevin Jackson called it. “You’ve got to be a good listener to be an actor, I’m told,” says Lee. The pair would have hour-long sessions, with Lee lying on his back, eyes closed, in which they would build the character of Will: where he was born, who his mates were, right down to “he’d skinned his knee going down the shops on his bike”. Lee seems particularly fond of the idea that Will rides a bike, not a car. “He’s the kind of guy that would care about the environment. He’s not too flashy.” This back story informed his performance. “Even though that wasn’t used when you come on set, you are comfortable with your character and you know who he is. That’s got to help you in the moment when you’re trying to fall in love with a sundar ladki as they call in Hindi – which is a beautiful woman.” If Lee is still a new kid on the Bollywood block, in unINDIAN he plays against an acting heavyweight. Chatterjee is best known outside of India for her starring role in the 2007 British film Brick Lane and this year will also feature in Lion, co-starring Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel. Lee says he was “like a sponge” around her, “as any young kid going into the sporting arena would watch what a professional does that’s been around the game for a really long time.” It is not only that India loves Lee, but that Lee loves India (and suffice to say, the two are not wholly unrelated). “I chose to do [the film] because of my love for India,” he says. With the world so troubled by racial conflict, he hopes audiences enjoy their “nice film”. “Bit of love in there, bit of sadness as well – but it’s a real feel good story.” Does Australian embrace multiculturalism to the extent it should? “I would like to say yes, but I think like in all countries it could be a lot better, definitely.” He says the conduit between Australia and India, and anywhere elsewhere for that matter, “is through love, is through sport, is through film.” “People are sick of racism. We are stamping out in sport and obviously through film we want to stamp it out as well,” he says. The Indian-born Australian director Sharma says the film redefines the Australian story, bringing to the forefront its immigrants in a contemporary Sydney setting. He says of his eastern and western influences “the two can never meet, as Mark Twain said” (it is actually from a Rudyard Kipling poem), but “you can always mix the two”. “I’ve always followed the western body and eastern soul philosophy,” he says. “The structure, our narrative, the length of the film, 100 minutes, Screen Australia support – that was all western. But the soul, the drama, the human relationships, the music, the colours were all eastern. I was inspired by Bollywood which I grew up on, and I was inspired by the absolutely thorough professionalism of the Australian film industry.” That mix inspired the film’s tagline: a cross-cultural romantic comedy. “There’s a lot of laughs and a bit of spice,” he says. Lee says the film is about being comfortable in your own skin. “Certainly with the surname of Lee, I’ve had that my whole life. I’ve been asked if I had a Chinese background.” (The reporter may have spluttered at this point.) “That’s not me saying I’ve grown up tough and I’ve had it against me, but I’ve sort of known from a young age that people ask questions. He says anyone who watches the film will find at its heart the best of messages. “Love has no boundaries. Love. You can’t help who you fall in love with.” unINDIAN is in Australian cinemas from 15 October