I walked in with confidence. I knew the character inside out and delivered what I thought was an exceptional audition. Nothing could stop me now. It was only a matter of time before the friendly, young casting director Barbara Fiorentino called the other Barbara （Cameron） and I would be sitting with the writers, impressing them with all my hilarious tweaks to the script.
I waited by the phone with nervous confidence the rest of the day. It never rang. The following morning I called Barbara Cameron’s office to check in. “No word yet!”
I started to get even more anxious, eating lots of tacos in my pajamas and doing push-ups on the cold blue tile in the kitchen.
A full week later, a call. “Sorry, honey,” my agent said. “The producers didn’t really respond to your read. Maybe they thought you were a little too old for the part. You’re not moving forward.” I had been so presumptuous—I studied hard for this, I had overcome my hesitations about auditioning for the role, and I expected to advance to the next round. Out of desperation, I asked Barbara if there was any other way to get back into the room. “No. I told them you didn’t feel your best because you had the sniffles, but they just won’t see you again.”
My confidence was shattered. I was confused: How could I be too old to play a character that was basically my age? It didn’t make any sense! Wait a second, was I actually not good enough to get a callback for the role of an exchange student named Taj freaking Mahal? For two weeks I sat around, distraught. Part of pushing ahead as an actor is believing in yourself, believing that you’re good enough to succeed if given the right opportunity. It was probably worth reassessing my life. A few weeks later, another blow to my ego. An acquaintance from UCLA forwarded me something: The Van Wilder casting director had sent mass emails to every Indian Student Union at every major university in the United States to solicit audition tapes. It was Barbara Fiorentino’s first film. The role of Taj hadn’t been cast yet, and she had gotten desperate enough to canvass random colleges to find someone brown. It didn’t matter if they had any training.
Finding out that the casting team was letting random auntie and uncles’ perfect science-major kids audition for this film made me feel like my eyes would bleed. Kids like Gita （“Why are you studying? Aren’t you just, like, a theater major?”）， Varun （“my safety is Hopkins”）， and Aarti （“seven-year combined medical program!”）—they could audition for this?! Nikhil was going to Yale AND maybe getting the part of Taj Mahal Badalandabad?
I couldn’t let some sciencey Indian kid beat me out of this role. I couldn’t slip back into self-pity. I had to dig into remembering what I loved about storytelling and the arts to begin with, channel those days at my performing arts high school, bring back some of my East Coast hustle, pick up my ax and thrust my pelvis out again.
I needed to go rogue: If they were soliciting audition tapes from anyone who was Indian—actor or not—then I would make a tape too and send it along with a note to the casting director. “Is that a dumb idea?” I asked my agent. I could sense her smiling over the phone. “What do you have to lose?” she said.
I spent the next couple of days working hard on the material all over again. A talented director I met through friends two years prior, Senain Kheshgi, was nice enough to help me rehearse and professionally tape the audition scenes in her apartment. Before sending it off, I wrote a heartfelt letter to Barbara Fiorentino, letting her know that although I had already come in to audition for her, I was sending a tape because unlike the people she was auditioning from Indian Student Unions around the country, I was a trained actor, confident I could do professional justice to the role. I sent it off in the spirit of a man frustrated, desperate—and motivated.
I didn’t know it at the time, but over the course of that period, Fiorentino’s frantic search of Indian Student Union aspirants had actually turned out to be a resounding success. She had gotten hundreds of audition tapes from Taj hopefuls all over the country. She hadn’t slept in days, instead watching tape after tape of mostly abysmal auditions from every Indian man aged eighteen to fifty who had been forwarded her casting notice. She was relieved to finally find a premed undergrad from Stanford who was absolutely perfect for the role of Taj Mahal. The producers cast him, and everything was set to go. It was just a couple of weeks until principal photography was to begin. Unfortunately for Barbara Fiorentino, when Dr. Stanford told his parents that he had been cast in a movie and needed to take a semester off from college, they freaked out and forbade him from doing it. “What is this acting-bacting nonsense? You are going to medical school! You are going to be an oncologist!”4
She had searched the country and found what she thought was the right brown guy, only to be met with the dreaded Uncle and Auntie veto just as rehearsals and camera tests were set to begin. Totally exhausted and overcome, Fiorentino found herself crawling under her desk, crying on her office floor on her hands and knees while sorting—in desperation and defeat—through a late pile of VHS tapes that had been received in the days since she thought she’d found her Taj. Through wet eyes and intense fatigue, she opened a few of these new envelopes, including mine, the only one to include a letter. I remember this kid, she thought to herself. He was really good. I don’t know why the producers didn’t respond to his audition. She watched my tape and wiped away a few tears. This is our Taj. Suddenly, I was back in the picture. Fiorentino took the tape to the producers and told them they needed to audition me in person. With no mention of my prior rejection, I was sent straight to the final audition, known as the “chemistry test.”
It was down to me and one other Indian actor I heard they’d found along the way. I knew nothing about my competition except that each of us would read scenes with Ryan Reynolds, and the producers and director would see which of the two Tajs fit best.
I was very curious for intel on my competition. What did he look like? Was this dude good-looking? Tall? Was he even a full-time actor like me? Or was he one of the many Indian college students who thought it would be fun to audition for a movie?
None of the above.
When I walked into the waiting room for the chemistry test, I saw that my competition was… a white dude. Wearing brown makeup. Though it was common, I’ll let that sink in for a minute. I was up for the role of an Indian foreign exchange student named Taj Mahal against a white dude in brownface. Any reservations I had about taking the part vanished.5
I encountered brownface regularly enough in those days that I often assume everyone can relate to how widespread and not shocking it was. This is not to say it wasn’t deeply maddening （it always was）， but in writing the first draft of this chapter, for instance, I didn’t anticipate my editor’s notes: “This is quite shocking! And horrifying! Please give us some examples.” There are too many to list. You can safely assume that any audition I went on, for a role written specifically Indian, included a number of white actors who （with the right makeup） could “pass” for Indian according to the producers. （To illustrate how not long ago this was with a frame of reference, the NSYNC song “Bye Bye Bye” had already been out for more than a year.）