EXCLUSIVE! Phillauri's Suraj Sharma on Priyanka-Deepika's international stints: Sensibility of diversity being a normal thing is happening

Phillauri's Suraj Sharma who became a household name with the Hollywood flick Life of Pi explains how Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone's international stints are important.

Written by Karishma Shetty , Journalist

Updated on Mar 16, 2017 | 04:26 PM IST | 450.6K

Suraj Sharma is all set to surprise everyone with his comedy schtick in Phillauri. Directed by Anshai Lal, Phillauri stars Anushka Sharma, Diljit Dosanjh and Mehreen Pirzada as the leads. The movie is co-produced by Fox Star Studios and Clean Slate Films.

Suraj became a household name when he starred in the Oscar-winning movie Life of Pi and his performance as Pi won him critical acclaim as well as a Bafta nomination for Rising Star. He was also seen in the hit American TV show Homeland.

With B-town celebrities like Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone venturing into the West, we asked Suraj on how he feels to see more and more Indians being featured globally. To this Suraj replied, "It's really important. It's simply the fact that - the more the merrier. The more of us that go there - the more people of colour, of some form of non-caucasian ethnicity, the more they're seen, the more it is normalised for the audience to see those people. So it becomes normal for those characters to be - not the Indian character, but just one of the characters. That's really important. So, when Deepika or Priyanka do things like this, it's really important. Also, Dev (Patel) getting nominated for an Oscar and he's won a Bafta which is fantastic and it helps everybody and there is Irrfan (Khan) as well. I feel very good. As time progresses - even though sometimes we feel like politically, we might not necessarily be in the best place, but this sensibility of diversity being a normal thing - not diverse but just as a normality, that's happening dheere dheere."