Dev Patel, who will receive Gold House’s A1 honor in entertainment and media, spent over six years bringing “Monkey Man” to the big screen, and it wasn’t an easy journey for the actor turned writer-director.
“Monkey Man” was initially set to shoot in India, but filming was delayed due to the pandemic. At one point, the production was almost shelved. Patel ended up shooting on location in Indonesia.
Along the way, Jordan Peele saw the film and became attached as a producer. His company, Monkeypaw Prods., was a producer on the film, which is distributed by Universal. “I was just trying to find a way to tell this story. I wanted it out there,” Patel said at the film’s premiere at SXSW. “I reluctantly got pushed into the driver’s seat and it unfolded from there.”
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In the action-packed fight film, Patel plays Kid, a young man who avenges his mother’s death at the hands of corrupt law enforcement.
Patel trained intensively for the role and during the four-month shoot, he talked about the toll it took on his body. “I broke my hand in the first big action scene, broke some toes, tore a shoulder, eye infections, bruises,” he told Variety’s Marc Malkin.
Patel’s co-star Vipin Sharma who plays Alpha, the leader of the trans community known as hijras told Variety, “There’s something about Dev that I also feel very caring about him. That’s already there in me. I just used that in a way because I already admired him, love him and think very highly of him. Some soulful connections cannot be explained… it’s just that simple, pure human bond that happens, I think that’s what I have with him. And that’s what I guess reflects in the film also, because during the scenes, I always felt that about him.”
The film examines India’s caste system, something Patel said he wanted to explore in his storytelling. “You have the poor at the bottom, slaving away in the kitchens. Then you go up to the land of the kings. Above them is God — a man-made God that’s polluting and corrupting religion,” Patel said.