Sitting down and chatting with Queen Of Katwe Director Mira Nair was a remarkable experience.  Her passion for filmmaking, her love for her country, and her long-time work as an activist was inspiring.  She is an award-winning filmmaker who moves back and forth between Hollywood and independent cinema. After several years of making documentary films, Nair made her remarkable debut feature film “Salaam Bombay!” (1988). The film received more than 25 international awards including an Academy Award® nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.  You may recognize her second film, “Mississippi Masala” (1991) starring Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury, which won three awards at Venice, a Best Feature nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards and introduced her to Uganda, where it was partially filmed and set and where she has since made her home.

Nair was full of smiles as she began our question and answer session on directing Queen Of Katwe, casting the movie, and giving back to the people of Uganda.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you got involved in the project?

Mira Nair : I’ve been living in Kampala now 27 years, ever since I made Mississippi Masala there and started my life there. I fell in love and had a son and planted gardens and created a film school called Maisha and the slogan of Maisha is if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will.

Because there are so few images of African on any screen anywhere and when there are, it’s usually death, despair, dictators, bestiality. So we created the school, because we have to make the dignity and the joy of everyday life in our street in Kampala, anywhere. You know, be specific. Be local. Be truthful. And be excellent. It was such irony that despite my being surrounded by local stories for 12 years — we had 680 alumni students now, we have several directors we have created from East Africa — that this story of Phiona Mutesi, who lived 15 minutes from my home — I did not know about her.

I learned about her because a young man from this building, Tendo Nagenda, who’s a Ugandan and EVP of Queen of Katwe, Disney came to see me in my garden in Kampala when he was at a family reunion about four years ago. And he showed me this little article about Phiona in the ESPN journal, about this child who sold corn in Katwe who now was heading to becoming a chess prodigy and going to the Olympics in Russia. And I was completely struck by the story. I said I’d love to meet Phiona first. And I met her funnily enough in New York City where I lived the rest of the year.  I lived half my time in Uganda and half the time in US.  I met her there and with Robert Katende, and we had such a lovely connection instantly, because we are Ugandan and we were like, you know, joking, slanging, everything.

Then I got to know her really well and also Robert and then asked to meet Harriet and spent a lot of time with her. She took me just below where I lived is where she was evicted when her husband died. And she took me in the ramshackled van and we spent the day just going from one place to another where she had been with her four kids.  At and abandoned church, the veranda of a little vendor stand, a shop somewhere, finally a little room. I mean like when I saw the trajectory of actually the struggle, the homelessness, the struggle and her fierceness to keep her family together against absolutely every odds there was, it just was so deeply moving and great because she was full of courage and full of pragmatism. She was not a defeated woman by any means, you know. To have a house at the end of it made by her daughter’s earnings, I mean [SIGHS].

Special Connection to Harriet

Then there’s another story even though you haven’t asked I’ll tell you, because [LAUGHS] I have this school. I have a dinner for all the students who come once a year and I invited Harriet and Phiona and everyone that year.  They came to my home and you forget when you live in a home with a garden you think people have seen a home with a garden, but not Harriet. She had never been in a place like that, a home and looking at my garden. I’m a real gardener. I have a nursery. I create my own plants. I create tree nurseries, everything. She looked at the garden very quietly and and she had got the new house by then and I said I would love to come and plant your garden. And she said — she just looked very quiet and she looked everywhere and she said it is because I have seen your garden that I will allow you to plant mine.

It was great, because she’s so dignified. The next day my pickup truck I put 80 plants and I drove out to her home and planted the garden over the course of a day. Someone gifted her a smartphone. And every time a flower blooms — that’s what I get [a photo from the phone], because she doesn’t speak English, she speaks Ugandan. She clicks the flower and she sends it to me.

I have this sort of love connection with Harriet which is without words but just to do with trees, ever since.

What challenges did you face bringing the story to life?

Mira Nair : The most beautiful challenge was to distill the love and familiarity I have with my own home, my adopted home of Uganda, the people, the sassiness, the vibrancy, the style. Kampala is the center of used clothing in the world to give you an example. Clothes come in by weight, and there’s that market called Owino where Lupita goes as Harriet to sell her mother’s outfit. That is the market. Everyone dresses from that. You see the style of like a Pucci dress with a kitenge wrap on her — you know, that’s how my fish seller gives me fish every second day. So, I wanted to capture that sort of emphasis of like no matter what we don’t have, we will put forward something that is excellent! So the great challenge was to capture that sense of what we call in slang in Kampala lifist, somebody who embraces life fully and doesn’t complain about what you don’t have. If you have half an inch of water, you will wash your hair, and no one will know that you had a struggle. This the quality of what I live around and this is the quality that I hoped to capture. And, of course, Phiona, in her real remarkably and utterly true story gives us so much of that.

The other thing I really wanted to capture is that you cannot do it alone. You have to have the fire in you, but it takes a village. It takes a teacher to see your talent. It takes a mother to shepherd you, whether it is a right shepherding or not, whether she has to argue and not understand that it is a gambling game, is it not gambling. She, she wants to protect her children from disappoint. There is no point, she says, to have dreams because you will be disappointed. But Phiona proves to her mother quietly and steadily that it is possible to — with a teacher like this, with a community like this, with a street like this, with a family like this, it is possible to achieve what you could dream for. And that is the beauty of life there. That is what I wanted to achieve. It’s not just one girl’s story, but what I call the prismatic story, the story of the whole street, the story of the family, the story of the mother and the complexity of every character.

The other sweet challenge was filming chess [CHUCKLES]. It’s really a challenge to film chess, because it’s a highly intellectual game. And it’s about strategizing and making moves, and how can I as a visual filmmaker, as a visualist, make chess interesting? Can I? These were really truthful games. They were real games, real moves that Phiona was famous for. It wasn’t a made-up situation. So, Sean Bobbitt, our cinematographer, and myself really looked at every game as a unique visual challenge. We filmed every game differently from the other. And that was a challenge, because there’s only so many things you can do with the chess board. But how to create chess so that it can be emotional, dramatic, and propulsive, propel the story forward, and yet not bore you to death! Also satisfying the chess afficiandos. That was a, that was a sweet challenge.

So now did you play chess before, or did you have to learn the game a little?

Mira Nair : I was the mother of a competitive chess player. My son played competitive chess when he was eight, and we would go to Parsippany and go Holiday Inn in Atlanta. I was at all kinds of places. So I was part of the chess circle, but I didn’t really know chess well. I understood it, but I didn’t really play it. The real Phiona, taught me chess prior to the shooting. She would just laugh at me, because I was reckless and I would move the piece and she would say, ahhh, Mira, you must consider the other side of the board. [LAUGHS] I said that’s a great line, Phiona. It’s like a metaphor for the world.  If we all considered the other side of the world it would make life work. I used to write down what she would say, it comes out of her mouth in the movie if you notice it.

She would say are you, are you focusing on the game or on your film? I said the film. [LAUGHS] I love that as a teacher, she was fantastic.

How was it working with the costume designer?

Mira Nair : Kitenge, you have to love Uganda. That is how people are. I said before, the vibrancy of the style is something I have loved as I lived there, it’s about really having a sense of smartness. I used to have a great nanny, she is like my younger sister. She really helped me raise my son. When he was a little boy, every time we would go on a plane she would want him to put him in a three-piece suit. [LAUGHS] I would say, please let the track pants stay on. Let him be comfortable. We worked with a great costume designer, Mobolaji Dawodu, he’s Nigerian-American. He made this ravishing film called Mother of George. I had seen his work and it was about a Nigerian family in Brooklyn. And the way he shot and styled the African clothing, kitenge is what it’s called, vividly patterned fabric. It’s this juxtaposition.  My fish seller was wearing a genuine Pucci dress with the kitenge wrap on it.  This is how it is there, because all our clothing, the costumes in our film, all came from Owino, the actual second-hand market. We really did not need a big budget for this.

Even though everyone is dressed very vividly, it is actually how people are. And we went into the second-hand markets for all of it.

Can you talk about casting?

Mira Nair : If you know my work from Salaam Bombay, I always work a lot with non-actors, people who have never faced the camera before, opposite legends like Denzel Washington in this case Lupita and David. That kind of alchemy between the sort of purity and lack of artifice of a child actor, of a child really, not even an actor –opposite a legend who has a lot of tricks to their trade and all those tricks kinda have to drop off when you’re faced with the purity and freshness of a kid. Especially a kid who comes from the same streets as the story that you’re filming. For me it was always critical that we don’t go too far afield to find our children. All our kids came from Katwe or Chibuli, which is the neighboring community right  across the street from Katwe. All our kids have come from there, do live there.

For Phiona, I saw 700 girls mostly in Uganda but also in Kampala, in Kenya and in England. But I was sure that we would find her in Uganda, it was tough because this is the role that carries the whole film. One girl plays the Kenya champion. She was the finalist of Phiona. But to be honest, I was not in love. I was not in love and I only trust love. I trust my instinct. I have to love you, because I have to live with you for years, forever, exactly. You cannot have hesitation on casting, you know. So in January, six months after seeing so many girls, my very close friend and casting director, Dinaz Stafford was led to Chibuli, to a little dance company called Sosolya Dance Company where young kids learn traditionally dancing and performing in hotels on Sunday nights. They went into this rehearsal and they filmed Madina sweating and smiling. Then they came to dinner, they came home he said Mama, I have another possible Phiona. I just kinda rolled my eyes and thought, oh, my God, seven hundred and first [LAUGHS] aghhh. They showed me the film, and she was magnetic, but I still put her through the ringer for like three weeks of testing and learning to play chess.

Even though English is spoken in Uganda, Luganda is the mother tongue. Can she think in English? Can she emote in English? But the thing is she was a dancer and she was a great dancer. So, since the age of four, she has had an extremely similar life to Phiona where chess was Phiona’s way out. Dance is Madina’s way. But dance has given her this great balletic grace over her body and a control over her body, which is a very beautiful thing to have as a film actor, because you have to go for a kind of stillness sometimes, and I found the physicality very beautiful. She owned it and she’s extraordinary. The other children were cast similarly. A lot of kids — actually four kids came from that dance company. A lot of the boys came from there too. Brian, who plays her brother was in a football club, lives literally outside the gates where I live. There was a football local club and his coach brought Brian in, and I just loved his performance, his sense of comedy.

All the kids were either open casting calls on the streets and in the national theater. All the kids are from that area. Then it was two months of workshops, dance and debate and, all kinds of ways. I kept seeing who does what interestingly. Like Benjamin, who has the lollipop and I just loved it. You know, they make a lot of great sounds, like ahhh eeeeeh iiiish. [LAUGHS] It’s like this. You know, we talk like this. Benjamin [CHUCKLES] was constantly ahhhhh ahh. And I used it all the time. Or that snap, it’s such a lifist example.  I would say snap now, Benjamin snap now.  I liked it. It was like checkmate! One time somebody even tapped me and said, Mira, I think you’re going for too many snaps [LAUGHS] I said, no you wait, it will be the catchiest thing. ‘Cause I’m a shameless populist. I like to put bombs on seats. I like to entertain you. This is the spirit of our people. People ask can you do it? I can’t do it.

How has the shooting of the film impacted the people of Queen of Katwe and Kampala?

Mira Nair : Well we were waiting with our eyes for sure. One is because it is my home. That is where I live. I’m not gonna run away. So we have been doing several things. One is we ran a green set, an ecological set, which is unheard of there, because plastic is so awful. We turned everything into a recycled sort of heaven. We also worked with the community of Katwe. We called it the Legacy Project while we were shooting, which is all shot in Katwe and the real places. We asked what the community needed and it was decided with the elders of the community that toilets, public toilets were the big thing. We have a project with Disney to build a whole series of public toilets in Katwe, just a small example.

But then recently they had just purchased land and a building in Katwe to house permanently the Chess Academy. Then we have an educational fund for all the pioneers in the film to go to university is the idea. That’s a very complicated and very excellent endeavor. Like in the film, like in life, education isthe cornerstone. And in Kampala, it’s a big emphasis. People knock on your door every day for school fees because whatever it is you must go to school. The education of our kids is vital. Lastly in our film school, Maisha, which is now become a community interdisciplinary school for the community, we are building the last phase of the physical school, hopefully with Disney’s help, which creates a open-air community theater and audio visual library, because that is what is not there.  I mean there is no libraries. There are no books. That is what I’m appealing for. Because it is impossible for us to have done this thing and made this film and not care about what happens in the future, because the whole film is as much as it is about the present, it is about the future of our kids.

#1 Spice

We also were treated to a visit from a special guest!  Young Cardamom (Zohran) is Mira Nair’s son and one half of the duo Young Cardamom & HAB whose hit song #1 Spice is the catchiest tune in the movie!  Watch the clip below and buy it on iTunes, you know you want to!

Queen Of Katwe is in theaters everywhere September 30, and for more #QueenOfKatweEvent posts, interviews, and red carpet experiences from our trip, check out the following link, http://jenisonajourney.com/tag/queen-of-katwe.

Like QUEEN OF KATWE on Facebook: Facebook.com/QueenOfKatwe/

Follow QUEEN OF KATWE on Twitter: @queenofkatwe #QueenOfKatwe #QueenOfKatweEvent

My trip that included this interview with Mira Nair was hosted by Disney but every opinion documented is 100% my own.

I’m still floating from a whirlwind adventure last week.  I’ve relived walking the red carpet in Hollywood, and I’ve reviewed Queen Of Katwe urging my readers to see it in theaters this weekend.  Last night as I was reading over the transcripts of our exclusive interview with Lupita Nyong’o, Madina Nalwanga, and Martin Kabanza, my eyes welled up with tears for probably the hundredth time in the last eight days.  Expression emotion through crying is who I am, I’m sensitive to happy and sad moments in life and this interview touched on a little bit of both.

Walking into the room holding hands, we applaud Lupita, Madina, and Martin.  They stand tall and proud and their smiles glow. Read my movie review and you’ll know the back story of Madina and Martin, it helps explain the first question posed to the trio.  We started off curious of what it was like for the three of them working together.

Lupita : We like each other. And we had a lot of fun together. I met them before we started shooting. Once Madina was cast, it was a long process and then when she was finally cast, I walked into a rehearsal workshop situation where they had my whole family there and I walked in and she just, she said, hi, Mom.  I gave her a big hug and they were both just so receptive to me and Madina actually taught me how to cook. She sold corn in her past and I asked her to show me to go shopping in the market. She did all the shopping. My whole onscreen family, we went and did it together and then we went back to her house and she showed me how to prepare the meal. We all played a role in the preparation of the meal. [To Martin] I feel like he chopped a few things. You washed a few things. He participated. So we broke the ice that was and we had a really great working relationship. They’re really hungry and curious and present as actors and it was so lovely for me to have that present kind of immediate condition to work in.

Martin : …Mama.

Lupita : They still call me mama.

This is where you will find us all sniffling.  You even see Lupita choke up and wipe a tear from her eye.  Moms of the world will understand the depth of this statement especially considering their real-life circumstances!

Martin : It was my first time acting, but I never knew anything about acting, but she taught us how to get into character we used to copy her everything she do. We tried to do it so she was so good. She was a good mom.

Madina : I really used to copy her and I named myself copycat  because every time I could see her getting ready, getting to character and then I do what she was doing in quiet ways and she can’t see me, but she was really good and she really helped me in some of the hard scenes that are really hard because I could not really cry.  You’ll never find dancers sad.  We are always happy and she was there for me to make sure that I get into character so that I can cry. She really helped me so much.

That’s why I still call her mom because ever since I was young and I ever since I left my mom (because she wanted me to go to school and that’s why I left her) I’ve never had  anyone else that I’ve ever called Mom since I was four up to last year. She was the first one to be called mom from my mom and it was so, so nice for me to call her mom.  And she really acts it. Do you want this? So it was really nice for me to meet her and she was amazing for me and when I called mom for the first time, she replied to me, and I got touched inside my heart.

Martin: I was raised by my grandparents. My mother left me when I was three months, me too my first time to say mom in my mouth.

These children lived as Phiona did, they’ve experienced adversity and it’s awe-inspiring how they took their experience to heart and reflected this in the movie.  Their connection to Lupita is still strong and goes beyond a working relationship.

Our next question asked was were there any scenes that were especially touching?  Lupita took the reins with this one.

Lupita : Touching, my goodness, what wasn’t touching?  I do remember once we were about to shoot the eviction scene, I was sitting in our tent where we’d wait and these two [Martin, Madina] were very quiet and quite pensive, I asked them how they felt. They both mentioned how this was their life. They both experienced evictions in their past and I just remember being really moved at how this was reflecting a real life in Phiona, but also a real life in both of them.  They were having this chance to tell their story, to bring it to a larger audience that would understand the challenges of poverty, but also the triumph of people who live through it. Poverty is not one’s definition, and that they were going to have this chance to put that experience of their past into good and immediate use in the scene were about to shoot. Obviously, I come from a very different background. I come from a background of privilege and so I was very humbled in that moment. Here I am playing the mother and being the shepherdess of these two going through this experience and yet, I was learning so much from them, being able to take their lead as we went to do that scene.

Such a powerful interview so far. For a moment we switched focus and asked Lupita how she felt when she saw the cover of Vogue.

Lupita : …bring words to that moment. I mean, I was just so touched. When Vogue said they wanted to do another cover with me, of course I was like elated and then they said they were interested in doing a trip to Africa. I said the only place to go was home, it’s home and the place that means the most to me is my village, Ragda, where my grandparents are.  It’s my ancestral home and I spent my vacations there as a child and it’s where my whole extended family would come together and we’d pass the holidays together and so to see that place, that light, that equatorial light on the cover of Vogue, and to find my grandmother in the pages inside, oh my God, it was everything I hoped it would be.

Kenya is known to be a tourist destination. We have all the wildlife and that attracts thousands, hundreds of thousands every year, but Kisumo, the Western part is not at all, and yet it’s magnificent. I think it’s magnificent with the rock formation of Kitmekai and just the colors. The Lake Victoria. The fishing. And it’s the thing that actually brings Uganda and Kenya together. We share the Lake Victoria and we shot Queen of Katwe on one side of Lake Victoria and you see that in the film and then the Vogue shoot was on the other side of it, and so for me, that was a tie-in and it was a thing that I felt brought the film and me being on the cover together.

Lupita continues on to explain what it was like learning the language of Luganda.

Lupita : I didn’t know anyLuganda. These guys were my teachers, that’s what’s was so great about being in Uganda is that I got to immerse myself in the culture and I had to learn Luganda.  I came to Uganda and I was like I’m gonna pick up a few Uganda words and then I was introduced to Baby Ivan who plays Baby Richard and he didn’t speak any English. The first time he was given to me, he went right back to the person who gave him to me because he didn’t trust me and I couldn’t have a conversation with him.  I realized that Luganda was my lifesaver. It was going to really be my lifesaver and soI got to work learning Luganda and I would ask all the time how to say things and write them down and I needed to say very basic things to this boy like, do you need to pee? Are you hungry? Stop doing that. Keep quiet. Yeah, so it came in very handy and I loved learning it.

It was hard for me to think in my head what I liked best in the film.  Many parts were favorites for different reasons.  We asked the cast what their favorite scenes in the movie were.

Lupita : Favorite scenes… Handsome man first.

Martin : My favorite scene was where I run for the chicken, all the time I was eating chicken!

Lupita : I made this mistake in Twelve Years [a Slave] when they give you food, you can’t eat too much of it because there’s going to be so many takes and you’re going to be sick by the time you finish the scene. I wasn’t there for that scene, but we had a scene where we had to eat this stew and the art department made this stew so good. All the kids were scarfing it down and I said you’ve got to slow down because you’re not going to make it and then before you know it, they didn’t want. By the time we’re shooting, they’re were pushing it away. They didn’t want anything to do with it.

Madina : So with me, my favorite part in the movie was seeing David running around doing the cat and dog scene because not in my life I’ve never had someone who has time for me, who has time for all of us. He had time for us, so he could do the cat and dog playing for us. It was fun for me. I liked it, because for all of my life, I’ve never had someone like that. He had time for us, so I respected him, his time and I enjoyed watching what he was doing for us and it was so amazing to see him jumping. Jumping over the bed, collapsing  so that was my favorite.

Martin : Another scene that I liked in the movie is the flood scene . I like Mama doing it. She was so real, and me I didn’t have that power of crying, but she made me cry in that scene because she was so real.

We were all crying in that scene.

Lupita : It was, it was really cold and, and we shot that in South Africa over four days and it was the winter time in South Africa, so it was a little shy of thirty degrees. So we would get into our costumes, go into a hot tub, get wet and then go into this freezing cold water all day and every time they said, cut, we’d run to this hot tub. We’d just sit in and then we got all muddy because of the mud in the water and we’d just sit there and sing and talk and play until we had to go again.

Madina : I also had another scene. This scene where by he is to be knocked by a boda boda [motorcycle]. It was so bad for me because I had an accident with a car when I was little, so I saw a human being knocked down, so I knew it happens and how it feels to see someone in that much pain. So it was so bad for me and to make me remember the conditions that I was in when I was knocked down by a car, so that was my favorite one.

I too was hit by a car when I was young, two years old actually.  Though I don’t remember, my family has spoken on it a few times (they care not to relive it) and that scene too is powerful in the movie to me. 

Our time with the three of them was short.  Lupita was on her was on her way to the Ellen DeGeneres show following our interview, so one last question was posed and Lupita fielded it.  Do you prefer roles in stories that have never been told and what do you hope to bring to the forefront in playing those roles?

Lupita : Well, I love playing roles that that stretch me and help me to learn something new and deep about the human experience. It was not by design that I set out to play African women, but how happy I am to have had these opportunities because I think Africa all to often a blanket statement. There’s so specificity. It’s very general wash of ideas that people have of this continent where I’m from. I know, being from there, that it is many splendored and to be able to bring to the forefront particular and specific stories about African women is so exciting to me because I’m a child of global popular culture. I grew up watching Mexican, Brazilian, Australian, English, American TV and cinema and I think I was able to identify with all those people that I met and learn something new about those cultures. I’d never worn a winter coat, but I know when you’re in New York, you have a winter coat.  So for an African story to be playing that same kind of role, a universal story as we find with Phiona Mutesi in this story of Queen Of Katwe, it is my pride and my joy. I am so happy to be able to play a part in, in making the African woman the global woman.

—

for more #QueenOfKatweEvent posts, interviews, and red carpet experiences from our trip, check out the following link, http://jenisonajourney.com/tag/queen-of-katwe.

Like QUEEN OF KATWE on Facebook: Facebook.com/QueenOfKatwe/

Follow QUEEN OF KATWE on Twitter: @queenofkatwe #QueenOfKatwe #QueenOfKatweEvent

Queen Of Katwe is in theaters everywhere September 30!

My trip that included the interview with Lupita Nyong’o, Madina Nalwanga, and Martin Kabanza was hosted by Disney but every personal moment documented is 100% my own.