Wedding Season's Pallavi Sharda And Suraj Sharma On The Casting Hurdles They've Faced - Exclusive
We're all familiar with the classic rom-com — boy meets girl, girl is hesitant at first, boy wins her over, happily ever after, right? Netflix's newly released "Wedding Season" turns that on its head, with stars Pallavi Sharda and Suraj Sharma proving that sometimes, you can find love where you least expected it.
Sharda and Sharma join forces as Asha and Ravi, two singles who couldn't be different from one another. Due to meddling parents and the dreaded wedding season, the two join forces to create a farce of a relationship to take the pressures they're individually facing off their backs. What ensues is a heartwarming story that brings South Asian and Indian culture to the forefront, proving that love, heartbreak, and resilience are universal.
What makes "Wedding Season" stand out from the crowd, according to Sharda and Sharma, is its focus on South Asian culture and heritage. Having been on the Hollywood scene for years, Sharda and Sharma have seen first hand what it's been like for stereotypes and type-casting to take precedence. Joining forces with an almost all-South Asian cast for "Wedding Season," the Netflix film presented a new kind of filming reality for both actors, bringing with it a new found sense of inclusion and appreciation.
Ahead of the film's release, we chatted with Sharda and Sharma during an exclusive interview, and the pair shared how meaningful "Wedding Season" is, and what hurdles they — and their cast mates — have faced to get to this point.
Pallavi and Suraj were drawn to the diverse story at the heart of Wedding Season
Not enough can be said for how important inclusion and diversity is on-screen — so many of us gravitate towards our own culture portrayed in television and movies, but if a culture or diverse group of people is not presented, there's little to relate to. For Pallavi Sharda and Suraj Sharma, "Wedding Season" provided an opportunity to put South Asian and Indian heritage at the center of the screen, with the actors telling us how the film could showcase their identities.
"A South Asian woman was front and center and her journey was being explored with so much care and nuance," Sharda told us of the script. "It was an opportunity to give voice to this dual identity that I have grappled with, that so many of my friends and my cousins, my uncles, my aunties have grappled with, [and] my nieces and nephews."
As an Australian-born Indian woman, Sharda told us that at its core, "Wedding Season" gave her the chance to bring a reality many South Asian people face to the screen.
The actors realized the dreams of the South Asian performers who came before them
While chatting with the stars of "Wedding Season," Pallavi Sharda and Suraj Sharma revealed what attracted them to the project and what it meant as South Asian actors to take on two leading roles in a film that brought their culture to the forefront. Realizing the struggles that they have faced — as well as the South Asian actors who came before them — was integral to the production, Sharda and Sharma shared, telling us how nuanced "Wedding Season" truly became.
"You start realizing the amount of work and perseverance that has gone into this before you came into the scene at all. Where you stand, you might think, 'Oh my God, I've done this, been through the trenches and whatnot.' There are people for 30, 35 years who played essentially — most of the time — taxi drivers and 7-Eleven owners," Sharma told us.
Sharing that there was a genuine sense of standing on the shoulders of those who came before, Sharda categorized the experience in one sentence: "It was really humbling to work within that environment."
"Wedding Season" is now streaming on Netflix.