Himesh Patel on his move to Hollywood: ‘You’re not supposed to spend nine years in EastEnders and then get a Danny Boyle film’

HEmesh Patel started his acting career in a state of panic. It was 2007, and on the morning of his GCSE final exam, the then 16-year-old received a phone call asking him to take the test that afternoon for a role on the… EastEnders. The moment he finished the audition, his father rushed him to the casting. It was only when Patel read the character description that his nerves calmed down. He was on the same level as Tamwar Masoud, a somewhat eccentric, studious boy with an older sister, whose parents ran a post office. All of this was true for Patel as well, and he passed the test. He was a working TV star even before he started his A-level studies, but his biological parents did not allow him to be influenced by the glamor and glamour.

“I researched until I was 21,” Patel recalls now with some incredulity. “For five years of work EastEnders, I was still doing the paper round. I hated it at the time, but looking back, it kept me in check and kept me from getting sucked into being on TV and being somewhat famous.

Patel spent nine years on the long-running BBC soap, transforming Tamwar from a minor character into a fan favorite who unexpectedly became a stand-up comedian and married Danny Dyer’s on-screen daughter. Since leaving the show, he has continued to confound expectations: first, by landing the lead in Danny Boyle’s Beatles-inspired romantic comedy. yesterdaythen by appearing as a suave fixer in Christopher Nolan Tenet And as Jennifer Lawrence’s journalist friend in the end-of-the-world satire Don’t look up. In some ways, his rise is remarkable. In other cases, it’s completely understandable. Patel is a naturally ordinary man, with a quiet, earnest charisma that acts as a kind of narrative lightning rod. No matter how strange the world or strange the plot development, Patel can justify it and make it real.

Today he is in a hotel room in Los Angeles, 33 years old, with a full beard, talking calmly and calmly about death. He slowly tells me about one of his earliest memories: When he was just three years old, his mother took him to a village in the state of Gujarat, western India, to attend his grandfather’s funeral. “It was very lively,” he recalls. “They put his body in the house. He was completely wrapped in a white cloth, (although) his face was visible. He donated his eyes to… science, I think. It’s a bit grim. They put cotton in his eye sockets. He hesitates.” For a moment, lost in the past. “Maybe it was a little painful,” he says softly, his voice rich with domesticity. “But it’s not something that comes up in therapy, so it’s okay. “I think I was very intrigued.”

Patel was transported back to this formative experience of collective mourning while reading the script Schitt’s Creek The new film by creator Dan Levy Good grief. The Netflix film, streaming now, is a tender and honest meditation on loss that follows an artist’s attempts to deal with the sudden death of his husband — and the solace he finds in his closest friends. Patel recalls that even as an infant, his natural instinct was to try to console those around him. “I remember seeing my mother and grandmother sobbing,” he says. “I remember trying to comfort my mother as much as I could. Grief is something people go through every hour of every day, and knowing how to deal with it is very difficult. What I love about the story of this film, and I think — I hope — what people take away from it, is that you don’t You can do it alone.

Patel, Levy and Oscar-nominated Irish actress Ruth Negga play the three best friends at the heart of the film. They spent weeks together at Levy’s London home before filming, where they revealed their own experiences of love and loss. They also participated in bonding exercises, including a Crystal maze– Themed escape room, to help build the chemistry and rhythms of a decades-long friendship.

Paul McCartney loved “Yesterday”? I have no idea!

“I wasn’t really good at (the escape room),” Patel says somewhat wistfully. “Dan did rather well in this weird game where he was interviewing a ghost, or something. It was very funny.”

It was seeing Levy’s name on the script that first attracted Patel to it Good grief. Levy said so during the Emmy Award-winning skit Schitt’s Creek It was a show about family, Good grief Focuses on the importance of the chosen family. Patel, Advertiser Schitt’s Creek I was thrilled to find that Levy’s voice remained clear and convincing despite the transition from comedy to drama. “He has a beautiful tone of humor and compassion,” Patel says. “I feel like this show did that well. Even though it was ultimately a comedy, there was still a real heart to everything. It brought that to the big screen, as well as changing the tone. I think it’s going to be quite unexpected For a lot of people. Maybe they will expect Schitt’s Creek: The Movie“But it will be very different.”

Of course, Patel is no stranger to wrong predictions. As a child, he would sometimes adopt an accent and pretend to be American, in homage to the characters he idolized on television. In fact, he was born in the small market town of Huntingdon in 1990 before moving to the smaller village of Sutry at the age of nine.

“Growing up there was beautiful,” he recalls. “It was a life too far away.” His parents were shopkeepers in the heart of the village community, and he gained some of his early acting experience on the local panto theatre. “The first thing I did was snow whitePlaying some kind of guard, then Peter Pan “Where I played one of the Lost Boys,” he recalls. Eventually, he graduates to leading man status, with an early opportunity to showcase his talent for playing broken characters. “in Humpty Dumpty “I played Humpty Dumpty,” he says. “I hope none of this footage ever sees the light of day.”

While Patel was still in primary school, his teachers were so impressed by his performance that they encouraged his parents to enroll him in children’s theatre. He joined the Young Actors’ Company of the Main Theater in Peterborough, and then the Young Actors’ Company in Cambridge. “They gave me the test EastEnders “When I was 16,” he explains. “It all went from there.”

If you land on EastEnders Turning sixteen was a life change, as was the decision to quit the series after nine years in search of other opportunities. “I didn’t necessarily leave EastEnders With any kind of intention to reach any particular level. “I just wish I had a career where I could jump from one interesting thing to another, and not spend nine years working EastEnders It is seen as nothing harmful. But I was aware that there was, and perhaps still is, a certain perception of soap and the type of actors who make soap, and especially the type of actors who make soap for a long period of time. So I didn’t have really high expectations.”

When he was invited to record an audition for a mysterious project directed by Danny Boyle, he saw it as a pipe dream. “I thought it was amazing to be on the list, but there were hundreds of people doing it,” he recalls. “I thought I would do this and see how it goes. After two trials, the result was very good.

Even now, he seems incredulous. “I think I still have a little bit of imposter syndrome about the whole thing, because people aren’t supposed to make that journey,” he says. “This isn’t meant to happen. You’re not supposed to do it nine years later.” EastEnders Then he got the main role in the Danny Boyle movie. I’m glad I’m an example that it can be done. I hope I’m not the last young actor to prove himself on a soap.

He’s self-aware enough to admit that even if his path to success was unconventional, it wasn’t without merit. “It’s funny, I’m not necessarily posh, but there’s definitely been privilege in my life, for sure,” he says. “I went to private school for the last three years of primary school, and that’s where I discovered acting. So there’s definitely privilege there.” .

Boyle yesterdaywhich was written by Four weddings And Notting Hill Writer Richard Curtis was about a singer-songwriter who was hit by a bus and later became one of only three people on Earth who can remember the Beatles. It was an unconventional type of romantic comedy, and it needed a hero who could anchor such preposterous matters. She also needed someone who could contort and scream convincingly through some of the world’s best-loved songs. Somehow Patel pulled it all off, and the film won him many fans, including Paul McCartney, who said so painting In 2019, he and his wife, Nancy Shevell, “loved it.” Patel seems surprised when I mention this. “I had no idea,” he says. “Wow, that’s really nice to hear. I still get a lot of people coming up and telling me they loved the movie. I feel like people are still discovering it five years later, which is lovely. It’s a very heartwarming movie.”

Station eleven It is another Patel project that seems to still be making its way to his fans. The post-apocalyptic series, based on Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 novel, casts him as a man trapped in a Chicago apartment due to a deadly influenza virus. The timing of the show’s production and release was odd: filming began in early 2020, was halted for a year due to Covid, and then the show finally debuted during the second wave of the pandemic in late 2021. There is one silver lining, at least: Patel was nominated for an Emmy for his performance.

“Station eleven “I really set the bar in terms of depth of character, and I feel like I’ve proven I can do it,” he says. “It hasn’t reached the UK as much as it has in the US in terms of exposure, but people are starting to find it a little bit in the UK now. I’m very proud of it, for what it is but also because the experience of making it was difficult for many reasons. We’ve all had some kind of experience during This whole thing, and it’s really cool that we came out on the other side of it with something so special.

He says he hopes to continue to find roles that can match texture and nuance Station eleven And Good grief. He works with his friend, author W Capadasis Screenwriter Nikesh Shukla, based on Shukla’s memoirs Brown Baby, but otherwise his intention for his career remains the same: to keep jumping from one interesting thing to another. “I just want to keep growing,” he says. “Even if you fail, I think you are growing. You know what not to do next time.”

“Good Grief” is on Netflix