Aasif Mandvi did an interview with 30 Ninjas. You can check it out below.
Part 1:
DAN KAUFMAN: So how familiar with the cartoon were you when you auditioned?
AASIF MANDVI: I didn’t know anything about it. I’d never watched the cartoon before I got the audition. What happened was there was a period of time where they said, “Night is very interested in you for this role,” but he hadn’t actually made an offer yet. And so, in that period of time, between when they said, “Night is interested in you,” and when Night actually made the offer, I watched the first season of the cartoon. To understand a little bit more of my character, you know?
DAN: Were you excited to maybe be working with Night?
AASIF: It was weird, because I was actually—you know, I’d met M. Night Shyamalan briefly at the after-party for Lady in the Water, and I’d met him outside a Broadway show once. But I had never really spent any time talking to him or anything. After the audition they called me and said, “M. Night is gonna call you.” And I didn’t know if he was calling me to say, “Hey, you know, that was a terrible audition. Don’t ever audition for me again,” or if he was calling me to offer me a role. Maybe it’s, you know, a slow day, and he’s like, “Hey, I’ll call Aasif Mandvi and see what he’s up to. How’s life at The Daily Show?” I thought, “Maybe he’s just calling to chitchat, ’cause that’s what he does.”
DAN: Of course, he’s got nothing else going on.
AASIF: (laughs) Right. But then it turned out that he was calling to be like, “Hey, I loved your audition.” And we talked about it. I was in an airport, actually, on my way to shoot a piece for The Daily Show. So I was in the departure lounge at the airport and I get this call on my cell phone from Night, and he’s basically talking to me about this movie. And I’m boarding this flight, you know?
DAN: (laughs)
AASIF: By the end of it I was like, “Night, I gotta go! We’re taking off and they’re asking us to shut our cell phones off.” (laughs) And then he was just like, “Let’s do it. You wanna do it?” And I’m like, “Yeah, let’s do it!”
DAN: Awesome! So, the offer might have crashed the plane?
AASIF: It might have. It might have. (laughs) If I was like, “Listen! This is a really big deal for me! I can’t turn off my cell phone right now!” everyone on the plane would’ve been mad at me.
Part 2:
DAN KAUFMAN: In our interview with Night he said that he’s kind of a control freak. Did that manifest on set at all?
AASIF MANDVI: I can only say it if he says it. (laughs)
DAN: He did. But it sounds like it comes from a place of true affection for the material, and he just wanted everything to be right.
AASIF: Yeah. I would say he’s a control freak. But the truth is, many directors are control freaks. You become a director because you wanna tell everybody what to do and how to do it, you know? But at the end of the day, Night is an auteur. He’s somebody who creates a world that’s distinctly got his tone to it, in the same way that painters and writers do. He creates a feel and tone to his work that is very specifically him. So, in order to get that, he has to ask for exactly what he wants. And he does.
DAN: How was your experience with him different from other directors you’ve worked with?
AASIF: Well, some directors are very loose. Like with comedies, it’s much more about playing and improvising and riffing. In this, Night was more specific about things that he wanted. He’s like a musical conductor. He knows exactly what the musicality of the scene is supposed to be—he’s mapped it out in his head already. And the good thing about that is he doesn’t waste a lot of time, because he knows where he wants to go and how he wants to get there.
DAN: Yeah, he was saying his first table reads take so long because he would frequently be jumping up and describing scenes in great detail, acting out camera moves and such.
AASIF: Well, and this is an indication how technology is working today in making films, Night had many of his shots already animated onto his iPod.
DAN: Oh, cool!
AASIF: Yeah, he had them in an animated format so that he could see where he wanted the camera to go, and how he wanted to do it. So he was recreating things that had already been plotted out very specifically. It wasn’t like working with a director who’s figuring out where the shot is and how to do it [on the fly]. Because when you’re working on a huge production like this—this is not some indie film, you know what I mean?
DAN: Yeah, seriously. This is kind of a big deal.
AASIF: You can’t spend the whole afternoon figuring out how to set up this shot. I mean, you can’t do that on an indie film, either. But the thing is that he didn’t have that luxury, because there was a lot to do. There were a lot of things, CGI-wise and special effects-wise. So it’s quite a mammoth task. The good thing was that he had it all planned out — how he wanted the shot to ultimately look and how he wanted the camera to move. I’m sure that he varied from it to some degree, but for the most part, it was all kind of set up. He could tell you, “This is where I’m going with the camera.”
DAN: He also mentioned he doesn’t do a lot of coverage.
AASIF: He doesn’t do a lot of coverage and he doesn’t like to cut, which sometimes makes it hard for the actor, because you gotta get it, you know? It makes it difficult because normally, you can cut away, you can cut back. There was one scene that I did where we had to get it in one take, and it was a big, long scene! So the camera, the actor, everything had to work together as one. But then, when it works, it looks amazing. You’re like, “He got that all in one take?!” And that’s part of his style. I think that’s why the special effects and everything are gonna look so cool in this movie, because he doesn’t do a lot of cutting. The special effects, the waterbending and the firebending and all that stuff, it’s all being done in these long takes. I don’t think we’ve seen that before. I don’t think we’ve seen Night’s style in a special effects movie like this before.
DAN: I don’t think we have, either.
AASIF: It’s not gonna be like a lot of action movies, where you’re just like cut, cut, cut, cut, and half the time you don’t actually know what you’re watching. You’re just seeing a lot of close-ups. You know you ended up at the end of a battle, but you don’t quite know what happened. I think that’s what’s gonna be so cool about it; these long takes. That’s gonna be what makes it unique. So, on one hand it looks awesome. On the other hand sometimes it’s hard for the actors and for the special effects people and everybody involved. (laughs) And for Night himself, you know?