Director of gay rom-com ‘A Nice Indian Boy’ says it nearly didn’t get made due to ‘racist’ Hollywood

Roshan Sethi’s “A Nice Indian Boy” is lighting up the BFI London Film Festival, but its path to the screen was anything but smooth. The gay rom-com, starring Sethi’s real-life partner, Karan Soni (“Deadpool”), and Jonathan Groff (“Mindhunter,” “Glee”), nearly didn’t get made due to financial challenges.

“We barely got this movie made,” Sethi revealed in a new interview with Variety, noting that they struggled for years. The Indian American director, writer and physician said Groff’s involvement became crucial to secure funding. “None of the Indian actors are deemed meaningful enough to obtain financing,” he added, calling Hollywood “one of the most racist industries in America.

“A Nice Indian Boy” explores cultural tensions when a socially reserved Indian American doctor (Soni) introduces his white fiancé (Groff) to his traditional family. Interestingly, Groff did not know that Soni was gay and that he and Sethi were a couple when he asked for Soni to be his love interest, Sethi told The Daily Beast in March.