As The Namesake releases in NY and LA today,  here is the second  part of an interview with Mira Nair, conducted the day after the Academy Awards, last week: Q: You mentioned the things you liked, immigrants you see in the book,  what you don’t see in the book.   Can you talk about […]

Q:   You had several other projects when you read The Namesake and you’ve said the project took on an urgency, was it that emotional thing that made it take off? MN:   Entirely.   I wasn’t looking for a film.   I was booked to do two films, one of which was already financed […]

Warning:   Plot details and spoilers ahead. Q: About shaving your head, how did you prepare for that scene? KP:   That scene was very important for Gogol because, up until his father’s death, the past few years of his life he’s distanced himself from his family because he’s gotten caught up in his college […]

  Continuing with  Namesake week, here is  the first part of an interview done with Kal Penn last week,  just after the Academy Awards.   Q: The name plays a lot of importance in the film, and you’ve changed your name.   In the movie’s credits, you appear twice (Kal Penn as Gogol, Kalpen Modi […]

  Before the movie was the printed word.   Jhumpa Lahiri‘s first novel, The Namesake, followed her Pulitzer Prize award-winning book of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies.   Houghton Mifflin has a nifty collection of resources related to Jhumpa and The Namesake, here. The author did  a round of interviews in New York last week […]