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Moviemaking at the Taj Mahal

Fri., Oct. 26, 2007 12:20 PM PDT by Marc Malkin

Milan Moudgill

Wanna shoot a movie at the Taj Mahal?

You better be fast.

Director Mira Nair was given just 24 hours at the 359-year-old Indian architectural wonder to shoot scenes for The Namesake, her movie adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel of the same name.

“The challenge at the Taj was to get there, to suss out the shots and then to design them and execute them and direct them,” Nair said at a special screening and Q&A last night on the Fox lot in Los Angeles. “And we had to do all that and finish by sundown in a public place we could not control.”

Milan Moudgill

The Namesake features Bollywood superstar Tabu—she’s made 70 movies and is only 37 years old!—as a young Indian woman in an arranged marriage whose college professor husband moves her to New York City. Spanning several decades, the movie shows how they eventually fall in love and start a family together. Their son, Gogol (played by Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle's Kal Penn) grows up determined not to follow their traditional ways.

The movie was shot primarily in New York in about six weeks, but also included 11 days in India.

Namesake is Tabu’s first Hollywood movie. There’s already Oscar buzz for a supporting actress nomination. So, does this mean she has plans to make more Hollywood flicks?

“I don’t know,” she said. “It depends on if I get the work.”

But she added with a laugh, “If you ask, I will come.”

I have a feeling the calls are already coming in.