LUCY TELLS ALL!
“I NEVER SAID I WON’T WORK WITH HER AGAIN.”
JANUARY 2018 ₹ 75
FAIR AND LOVELY “I WON’T WORK WITH HER AGAIN”
THE QUEEN STRIKES BACK!
THE IDEA FAIR AND LOVELY is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a Bollywood movie. A struggling young white actress becomes p a r t o f a H o l l y wo o d - Bo l l y wo o d co production shooting in Mumbai. She develops a complicated friendship with an “aging” iconic Bollywood actress on the brink of becoming obsolete. It’s an updated version of All About Eve, the classic movie about the rivalry between a veteran actress and her young ingenue. FAIR AND LOVELY takes the bones of Eve and fits it into a highly modern tale of race, age and sex. Week-to-week, the show is essentially a soap centered on these two women as they navigate the complex and rapidly shifting world of Bollywood, playing out with a large, diverse ensemble.
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Ram-Leela (2013)
Devdas (2002)
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Happy New Year (2014)
BACKGROUND
Bollywood is unpretentious, unapologetic, fearless entertainment. It puts it all out there. The hallmarks are brazen, shameless lighting, over-the-top emotions, extreme sentimentality and dramatic close-ups. And that goes for the audience as well. In India, the viewing experience is like being at a festival or wedding – people dance in the aisles, take phone calls, shout advice at the screen and whistle when pretty women appear.�
Bang Bang (2014) STARDUST | FAIR & LOVELY
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Goliyon Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela (2013)
Bajirao Mastani (2015) STARDUST | FAIR & LOVELY
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But it’s not all fantasy and escapism. The show gets its title from the dark underbelly of Indian culture – FAIR AND LOVELY – a skin whitening cream used by millions of women (and men). Why? Because there’s a bias against darker skin tone -- a widespread belief that fairer equals lovelier – a misconception that is obviously not exclusive to India. The message of FAIR AND LOVELY comes from the silver screen. Most of the biggest Bollywood actors look white. They are the cultural ideal – so pale they get sunburns. And even more shocking - some Bollywood actors are white.
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AMY JACKSON is a 100% white girl discovered in Liverpool, England by a Bollywood director who cast her in his movie. She went on to headline big Bollywood movies, such as Singh is Bliing, the sequel to Singh is Kinng. She’s a bigtime celebrity in India. For now. Because while the men of Bollywood continue working until they literally drop dead on set, the women have a hard out at age 35. Meanwhile, the female costars who came up with him are mostly gone. Madhuri Dixit, Kajol, Karishma Kapoor... all swept off screen. Like the Bollywood actresses who came before her, Amy Jackson’s extraordinary success wil l likely be fleeting.”
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THE WORLD After introducing our two leads in Hollywood, the rest of the first season takes place on the set of a Bollywood movie shooting in Mumbai. The movie is coproduced and financed, for the first time, by an American studio looking to crack open the Indian market (“India is the new China”). The set is organized chaos, a mixture of Indian and American crew members who have never worked together and have very different ideas of how to make movies. A Bollywood set is very different from a Hollywood set. There is often no script – only an on-set “poet” who dictates dialogue as it occurs to him. The initial focus is on the massively choreographed songs, which are rehearsed for weeks. The story that strings
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them together is a secondary consideration, developed only after the songs are finished. Everyone arrives late for everything. The crew dances while they watch scenes unfold. For most of the five to six months it takes to shoot a single movie, it’s pure chaos - but it always comes together in the end. Except when it doesn’t. The show will emphasize Bollywood’s reliance on improvisation as a stark contrast to Hollywood, with its months of pre-production and endless drafts of scripts. There is no development hell in Bollywood. Ideas become reality in seconds. And then fall apart in seconds.
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VISUAL STYLE FAIR AND LOVELY wil l deliberately mimic certain conventions of Bollywood filmmaking – clanging piano chords to mark every emotional beat, whip-fast pacing, dramatic close-ups and brazen lighting. O u r c re a t i v e g u r u a n d d i re c t o r i s FARAH KHAN. She began her career as a choreographer, single-handedly choreographing every landmark Bollywood dance sequence of the last three decades (including every song referenced in the pilot). She went on to become the first major female Bollywood director. Her movies, which are among the highest grossing in Bollywood history, include Main Hoon Na, Om Shanti Om, and Happy New Year. Her choreography has also appeared in Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, and the Broadway musical Bombay Dreams, which earned her a Tony nomination in 2004.
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Bounce, Iggy Azalea (2014)
Hymn for the Weekend - Coldplay feat. Beyonce (2016) STARDUST | FAIR & LOVELY
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THE MUSIC Sing is King feat. Snoop Dogg (2008)
There will be spontaneous song-anddance sequences in each episode – always using unexpected players at unexpected moments, making sure every musical sequence feels earned. The music will reflect modern Bollywood, which is wild, eclectic, and international, freely mixing genres and languages. It will contain both English and Hindi lyrics inflected with influences from Hip Hop and R+B – already a big trend in the industry. Attached to create the music is A R RAHMAN – the internationally known composer, songwriter and music producer. AR has won two Oscars, a Golden Globe and two Grammys for his work on classic Bollywood movies, hybrid features like Slumdog Millionaire, and pure Hollywood movies like 127 Hours. STARDUST | FAIR & LOVELY
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Aiyyaa (2012)
Devdas (2002)
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THE ICON ANJALI (35) is the most famous Bollywood actress in the world, the Jennifer Lawrence of India. In addition to her intelligence and savvy, which she does her best to hide, she’s sexy and intimidating. So famous that hundreds of people are permanently planted outside her soaring mansion on Juhu Beach. She’s the most googled woman in the country, even though she doesn’t use her surname (that’s a closely guarded secret). Fandom in a country of a billion people is on a level we’ve never seen. Now on the cusp of 35, Anjali is rapidly reaching her expiration date. It’s a fate no other Bollywood actress in history has been able to escape -- but Anjali is determined to beat the odds. It’s not about the money – she has more than enough of that – it’s about refusing to go gently into the night. The threat of becoming irrelevant is causing Anjali to act out. She’s throwing tantrums on set and off, refusing to emerge from her trailer, having affairs with famous married men and leaking stories to the press. Instead of becoming more polite and subservient, she’s becoming more demanding and difficult. She sacrificed everything to make it to the top, been worshipped by millions, and now she’s hurt and outraged her fans can be so easily swayed by the next hot thing.
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THE NEXT HOT THING LUCY SULLIVAN (23) is a naïve, hopelessly optimistic, and secretly ambitious young woman. After graduating college in the Midwest, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career and ended up working as a fulltime extra on the set of a soapy network medical procedural, The White Coat. She tells everyone back home she’s a working actress, rubbing shoulders with celebrities. In reality, we watch her collect her SAG-minimum check of $88 a day, do her own makeup at the extra table and sit for hours in “holding.” Lucy shares something in common with Anjali – an unwavering belief in herself. She knows one day she’ll be a leading lady, though doesn’t know when or how. She always gets the same feedback – “You’re sweet and cute, just a bit... over the top.” A weakness that will later turn out to be her greatest asset. In a strange way, Lucy was born for Bollywood. It plays to all her strengths -- dancing, s i n g i n g , m e l o d ra m a . Lucy has always lived in the shadow of her aggressively successful sister, MACKENZIE – but her life is about to change in a big way.
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“I’ve always been shy” MANISH
“I COUNT VERY FEW PEOPLE AS FRIENDS” - ANJALI
“I WAS IN A RELATIONSHIP AND MY PARENTS DIDN’T KNOW.” SONAKSHI REVEALS THE DEVASTATING TRUTH