Interview: Ali Fazal On Playing Queen Victoria’s Best Friend and Confidante In Victoria and Abdul

Say the name Abdul Karim and most people will respond with a blank stare. Very little was known about Abdul Karim until recently because he was virtually erased from history books. Sent to England from India during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee year, he was assigned to deliver a gift from a distant country that was part of her empire. What transpired between them at the state banquet was the beginning of an close and unexpected friendship.

He taught her about Indian culture and cuisine, and he taught her Urdu, becoming her Royal Mushi. In the new film from director Stephen Frears, Victoria and Abdul brings to light the true story that those in the palace inner circle had tried to conceal. Ali Fazal plays Abdul, the man who causes a royal uproar with his arrival which ultimately disrupted the staid protocol in the royal household with the color, light and laughter he brought to the grieving, lonely Queen.

I caught up with Fazal to talk about how his experience in the film and how costume designer Consolata Boyle help him bring Abdul to life. We also talk about how his own journeys in the UK helped him understand some of the amazement that Abdul would have felt when he experienced the royal household and the Queen’s Scottish estate for the first time.

How do you start preparing to portray someone like Abdul?

It was a long process. I had to be very mathematical about it because there’s just so little information on him. I decided to use a lot of Shabani Basu’s research and her journals while almost trying to decipher the time period as well as the time.

I must have gone through at least eight history books that looked at both India and Britain and there was nothing. Only 2% of what I know came from those books but a lot came from deciphering the handwriting and looking at photos to see what costumes came when. In the film, it’s the costumes that tell you about the time and takes you through those fifteen years because [screenwriter] Lee Hall doesn’t use a timeline as such in the film.

It was such a great collaboration of people, especially Consolata who was so in synch with the story. It was a preparation of getting into the character. Each time I was getting fitted, she would explain how the stitchings were different or how the designs were different according to the time and so the posture and walk would change.

One scene that is so memorable is when Abdul steps off the ship for the first time, you see the magic in his eyes. He’s mesmerized and Stephen (Frears) has this great shot as he looks around.

Talk about that moment in the film and what that was like.

You know it was between three to six months of being fatigued on those ships. One of my favorite parts was getting off the ship and you imagine all these amazing things around you, and you see this beggar. The beggars are all there at the harbor and that begins the journey of the royal palace. You have that happening on the streets and then there’s the royal madness and chaos happening.

It was also my first time in London and I walked into the palace for the first time and I remember looking up at the ceiling and Lee came up to me and said, “That’s Abdul, that’s how I want you to feel.” That’s probably how Abdul felt when he took his first steps into the palace.

I’m assuming then that when Abdul sees the Scottish Highlands for the first time, that was a reflection of your own journey?

Oh that was my first time. It was so beautiful. I also have to tell you that Judi and I went through hell because of the midgees.

Oh no, not those.

Have you been there?

I’ve been to Scotland, but not the Highlands. However, I know all about midgees.

They told me they’d be a bit like the mosquitos and I told them I’d be fine. Suddenly, there are these bugs that you can hardly see. They’re like flying piranhas that eat into you. I think the scene was edited out because Judi and I are on the boat and all you see is us constantly slapping ourselves because we couldn’t get through the scene without being bitten.

Speaking of Judi, how do you prepare to work with someone like Judi Dench and what did she teach you?

You don’t prepare, you can’t. She makes you look so good already. What was wonderful about preparing was that Judi and I got along from day one. She gave me this huge bear hug and I thought that was so nice. I shared a fan moment with her and there we were hugging it out and laughing, cracking jokes. The next time I met her, she was on set. She was so easy to work with and she is so generous.

I remember thinking to myself that if she can do something in three takes, then I can do it in two. It was about mistakes and finding our spaces. She was visiting Queen Victoria again after twenty years, but we were discovering new things about our roles and characters. The thing is, she could do this in her sleep but she breaks that mold and it was fun watching her just do quite the opposite of what you’d expect.

What was the most fascinating thing you learned about Abdul?

Shabani went to Windsor Castle and she asked for the Queen’s Urdu journal. They brought in thirteen volumes on a trolley. That was shocking to me, thirteen years of her learning a language. She had the capacity at that age to take in so much. What came from those pages was this unique relationship they shared. There was something so spiritual about those moments that they shared together. It wasn’t two people paid to talk to each other, they broke protocol. They went to places where they could be together and share things. Intellectually they stimulated each other, this lowly servant from India and she was the most powerful woman on the planet. From his point of view, she should have been happy, but she was lonely and bored and he called it. I found that so amazing, he channeled something through culture to this woman who was inside this cage of royalty.

What is the Queen’s legacy in India?

The whole idea was to remove all traces once we got independence. It wasn’t a pretty picture as you know. It was 200 years of British rule and colonialism. This happened a few years after the mutiny and it changed things for the worst, and there was a lot of unrest all the way through the independence and long after. We are still recovering from that.So, there used to be statues of her, they were removed, and they’re still lying there in some back alley. They don’t like the association.

But at the time, they worked for the British Empire and this was just another man who was employed by the Brits who ultimately befriended the Queen.

Victoria and Abdul is out now.