Apron Strings is Sima Urale's culture-crossing film about mothers and sons. Here British TV star Laila Rouass and local familiar face Scott Wills talk about the challenges of their respective roles in this very Auckland movie
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It was always going to be a long shot. A seemingly ridiculous proposal. Why on earth would an established English actress - the star of a hugely popular British television series - fly across the world, to star in a low budget Kiwi film with a first-time
director?
But Laila Rouass was all ears when she received the Apron Strings script from producer Rachel Gardner. There was just one problem - her character's age.
Rouass laughs as she recalls the memory, baulking at the idea she - a flawless 33-year-old - could pass for 42.
"Possibly that is my vanity speaking," she says. But Gardner was convincing and with the promise of some "great makeup artists", Rouass signed on to the project.
"I thought, 'yeah, I'd love to do it. I know it's a small movie, but I'd love to film in New Zealand.' I just thought it would be an experience if nothing else."
So she boarded a plane, with her eight-month-old daughter in arms, and flew to Auckland for the five-week shoot.
The film is the feature debut by director Sima Urale, who has made several acclaimed short films and documentaries. But Rouass wasn't concerned about Urale's lack of big screen experience.
"I like working with first time directors because they're not set in their ways. It's a lot easier to talk to them and you've really got room to explore.
"Sima was really open to suggestions and ideas," Rouass adds. "That's who she is - very free and open with herself so it's very easy to communicate with her."
The film, which opened this year's New Zealand International Film Festival, follows the parallel stories of two families - one Indian, one Pakeha. But Rouass says she didn't accept the role for its Indian connection.
"When I read it, I didn't think it was about a family that was Indian. It was just about a woman struggling to find her identity. All the characters are trying find their place in the world."
In the film, Rouass' character Anita is forced to confront her past and her estranged sister when her son Michael begins questioning his Indian heritage and secretly searching for answers.
Though she admits the story is sensationalised to a point, Rouass saw it as a realistic premise, which was key to her involvement.
Likewise, she related to Anita's work struggles. A glamorous television chef, Anita constantly finds herself battling her producers, who try to portray her as an Indian cliche, in colourful saris, cooking up curries. It's a struggle Rouass - who is of Indian and Moroccan descent - has faced in her own career.
"Anybody who is from, or looks like they are from, an ethnic group, will get that in this job," she explains tentatively. "It can be quite frustrating but you have to rise above it and pick your parts carefully.
"That's why I relate to Anita because this is what a lot of Asian [actors] - or anyone from a different background - are going to find.
"They are going to experience it and go 'well, is colour the first thing you see before anything else?' You have to question these things," she says.
"Sometimes you read parts and it's an Arabic girl and she's a terrorist, or it's an Indian girl and she's being forced to marry somebody she doesn't want to. And you think, well these things happen, but it's not the majority. Cultures move on, they've progressed. It's not like it was in the 60s. You're constantly fighting these small battles."
But for the most part, Rouass thinks she has been lucky in her career, choosing a wide variety of roles - from the Bollywood bitch Amber Gates on Footballers' Wives to a part in the suspense drama Shoot on Sight about the London terrorist attacks. Taking on the role of Anita was part of adding to that diversity, and moving away from the caricature of Gates. "You do have to make a conscious effort to go out there and do something that's completely opposite to what you've just done."
Rouass - who sports a prim English accent throughout Apron Strings - would have loved to have mastered a Kiwi accent for the film, but says there just wasn't enough time.
"I got there and I was literally filming two days after I arrived. There wasn't much time to go out and hear other people speak," she laughs "at the end of the day, you get that. Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington played brothers in Much Ado About Nothing, so I think an accent is not going to get in the way."
LOWDOWN
Who: Laila Rouass and Scott Wills: Anita and Barry in Apron Strings
When: Apron Strings, opens today