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'Freakier Friday' director Nisha Ganatra was sneaking into film classes, now she's directing Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis

'Freakier Friday' director Nisha Ganatra was sneaking into film classes, now she's directing Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis

Yahoo5 days ago
Eh Listers: Nisha Ganatra
Director, writer and producer Nisha Ganatra has taken on the sequel of the 2003 Freaky Friday story with the release of Freakier Friday (now in theatres). But the legacy was put in the best possible hands with Ganatra, who grew up in in Vancouver, an expert in blending genres across film and TV, executing very specific and thoughtful visions for projects from Girls to Deli Boys, Dear White People, And Just Like That..., and the movie Late Night.
A through-line for several of Ganatra's projects is the theme of identity. The brilliant filmmaker is able to explore that theme through a variety of genres.
But Ganatra's career path wasn't linear. While she was in university, with the intention of becoming a lawyer, she started sneaking into film classes.
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"I had immigrant parents who are pretty, just traditional, so I didn't really assume there was any other path," Ganatra told Yahoo Canada. "And then my roommate in college, I was so lucky, she's the one who was like, 'Hey, you seem to be really into this other stuff. You might want to take a look at it.'"
"I was like, there's no career there though. And so she's the one that helped me go to the intern board and get some career advice. ... But it's still such a dream. I really can't believe I get to do this every day. It's still pretty incredible."
Ganatra made the transition to the famed New York University (NYU) film school, where one of her instructors was Spike Lee.
"Spike Lee was always like, 'Make a feature.' ... He encouraged me to make my first feature while I was in school, because he said, you go out there and if it's terrible, then it was your student film, you have another chance," Ganatra said. "If it's good, then you say that's my first feature, and you start your career and get going."
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"I think the advice from NYU was just hustle, hustle, hustle, and make sure the story you're telling is worth telling, because you don't want to waste people's time, both making the film and watching the film."
Ganatra stressed that another core lesson she learned is to ask of every project: "Why am I telling this story?"
"I think that's why, it's such a strange thing to say, but Freakier Friday feels like a very personal movie, even though it's a big, giant studio comedy, it still feels like I get to say a lot about being a single mom and parenting and intergenerational love between women, and it's very exciting to have that. And I think that came from my NYU days," she said.
Yahoo Canada's Eh Listers is an interview series with women and non-binary Canadians in film and television, looking back on their careers with unfiltered stories about their greatest projects.
Chutney Popcorn
Chutney Popcorn — 1999
Ganatra's first feature, Chutney Popcorn, was screened to an enthusiastic crowd at the 2000 Berlin film festival, receiving a standing ovation. The incredibly entertaining, endearing and witty movie is a must-watch.
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Ganatra herself plays the character Reena, in addition to directing and writing the film while she was a student at NYU.
"It might have just been not knowing any different, but there weren't that many Indian-American actresses at the time, and the one I had written it for, her parents wouldn't let her play a lesbian, so it was this mad dash to try to find somebody to play that part," Ganatra shared.
Reena lives in New York with her girlfriend Lisa (Jill Hennessy), but when Reena's sister Sarita (Sakina Jaffrey) finds out she can't conceive a child, Reena volunteers to be a surrogate for her sister.
"I think that movie was made with the love and sweat of all my classmates, and the community that came together to help us," Ganatra said. "The lesbian community in New York really turned out, lent us a motorcycle, somebody came and knew how to do lighting. It was all just like, 'Hey, do you know kind of how to do this? Cool, you're on the crew now.' ... So I think that experience of making something so community and so collaborative was informing for the rest of my life."
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"I remember when we were cutting that movie and we had been given an editing room that we could use off hours, so we would edit from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. And my editor, somebody came in to visit, to watch a cut and give us advice, and they were like, 'You two will never have it this good again.' ... And now I get it. What they were talking about was total creative control. You know that joy, that creative joy of being able to express whatever you want and not have to defend it so much, other than to audiences and the other collaborators. I think that was just a really special, fun experience, and I try to remember that and bring it to every film that I get the privilege of directing."
Mr. Robot — 2015
Steeped in a different genre, but still connected to the theme of identity, Ganatra put her stamp on the series Mr. Robot, starring Rami Malek, directing an episode in Season 1. Ganatra actually knew Sam Esmail from NYU, and was a fan of his writing, particularly the "paranoia" he injects into his work.
"I sort of move through the world with a really big open heart of like, everyone's here with the best intentions, and Sam's like, 'You're a f—king idiot. Everyone's out here to get us,'" Ganatra said. "And so I just thought something cool and interesting would happen if the two of us put those points of view together."
"I think he let me break the rules too, because his show was like, no handheld, ... and this is our close-up lens, and this is our distance, and we don't move the camera unless it's motivated. And if you do move it, there's never a tilt or zoom. ... And I was like, OK he's going to go into this drug house, and I think it should be handheld, and here's why."
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Then Esmail told her that he wanted the scene to be like True Detective. Ganatra hadn't watched the show, but she saw the opening frame and was really turned off by the extensive focus on a dead woman. But Esmail was actually wanting to make that moment a oner, a scene filmed with no cuts.
"So in that scene Rami goes into this house, does a drug deal, shoots up and is killed, all in a oner," Ganatra shared. "And it's insane that we pulled that off."
Girls — 2017
Ganatra directed the second last episode of Girls, which was actually supposed to be the finale, with that decision up in the air for a period of time due to Lena Dunham's health. But then executive producer and writer Judd Apatow came in to direct one more episode, which ended up being the series finale.
Ganatra's episode, titled "Goodbye Tour," is particularly special in the Girls fandom, because it includes an incredibly impactful montage of Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna.
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"They let me break all the rules of that show and create this insane montage where it kind of leapt through time and space to bring the show to a big series finale feeling," Ganatra explained. "Lena and Jenni [Konner] are incredibly supportive of directors, and it is a dream to direct for any producer, or writer, showrunner that is like that. That understands that, yes, it's the writer's medium, but the directors can bring so much if you let them."
"We can all stand there and just sort of cover a scene, but if you really ... encourage them to bring their vision, I think you're going to be so much more surprised. ... It makes you raise your game too. You're not going to just phone-in some TV directing. You're going to be like, OK what's the best I can do?"
Late Night — 2019
Then in 2019 Ganatra directed the incomparable Emma Thompson in the film Late Night, written by Mindy Kaling, who also stars in the film.
For Ganatra, the important message of the film is dismantling this idea that there can only be a seat for one woman at the table, whether it's a late night talk show, like in the film, or any other industry or career.
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"Mindy, again, also was like, 'Here, do your vision.' She had written this beautiful script, but one thing that Emma and I brought to it, that I love too, was that ... we wanted her character to be someone who had bought into the whole idea that there's only a place at the table for one, and so she was the woman that was holding out other women and keeping them down," Ganatra said. "And she had to come to the realization that she was never going to be treated as an equal in this field of uneven misogyny."
"And so for her to come to the realization that this character of Mindy's, she initially saw as a threat, was actually going to be her biggest ally, and how the two of them could support each other to rise in this business, it was such an important personal story. ... I've always kind of wanted to be Mike Nichols in a way, and Elaine May together. And so it was very much a fantasy New York film of smart women saying smart things, and smart looking guys saying smart things, and everybody working together to ultimately help the underdog achieve. I miss those movies where women are just ambitious and smart, like Broadcast News and Working Girl, just watching those movies were really big inspirations for that one."
Ganatra also highlighted how fantastic it was to work with Thompson on the film.
"She is one of the greatest actors of [our time]," Ganatra said. "She's also very much like Jamie [Lee Curtis], they're director's actors, so she will put her whole performance in your hands and really trust you."
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"And I think when someone like Emma Thompson does that, you really learn who you are as a director really quickly. ... She can take any idea you have and make it 20 times better in its execution."
Deli Boys — 2025
After working with Jenni Konner on Girls, they reunited for the brilliant series Deli Boys, starring Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh as Pakistani-American brothers who discover their father's criminal enterprise after his sudden death.
"[When I saw Jenni] was doing Deli Boys and Abdullah [Saeed] had written this bananas script that I love, I was begging to be a part of that," Ganatra said. "I wanted to live out my Coen Brothers dreams and just make a really cool, stylistic action-comedy."
"Blending genres has always been interesting to me. Whether it's comedy with big emotion, or a queer film with a family film, or with Deli Boys it was the extreme violence with comedy. ... I really explained the vision for how I would shoot the pilot to Jenni Konner and the team, and Onyx [Collective], and I'm just thankful they let me do it."
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Ganatra directed the show's first episode, really setting the tone for what we would see for the rest of the season. She set up a style guide for the show, the lenses she would use and how coverage would be executed, but she was particularly intentional with how violence was shown.
"It was tricky because it was Muslim and brown men, and ... I never want to see women murdered on screen, ever, and I never want to see brown men killed. I think we're at a pretty big crisis point for brown people in our country, and I didn't want to contribute to images of violence for those groups," Ganatra said. "There's a scene at the very end of the pilot and I thought, the better thing to do is to just show Asif and Saagar covered in blood, ... the violence happens off screen, and then we come back to it. And it kind of set the tone for how violence was treated in the series."
"But that moment was so fun because ... I was like, OK you guys are going to be covered in blood, and it's going to be like the christening of you guys into this lifestyle. But we also have to make sure it's funny. And so Asif does his, 'What just happened,' but then he added this scream, and the scream that he does, if it didn't happen at that perfect pitch, ... it would not be funny. And I think that was so incredible to work with a comedic talent like him, who knows how to use his instrument so well. ... And the [assistant director] reminded me recently, he said, you told them it was going on the count of three, and then you did a one, two, and you had the guy fire on two so that we really got their surprise reaction."
Freakier Friday — 2025
For Freakier Friday, while it's a big studio comedy, Ganatra said that it feels like an indie film for her, because everyone involved — from Disney to the producers and herself — feels like it's a movie that they all made together.
In the film Lindsay Lohan's character Anna is a single mother to her teenager daughter Harper (Julia Butters), while Anna's mom Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) is happy to step in and help Anna with parenting duties.
Anna meets Eric (Manny Jacinto), a widowed father to his daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons), who moved from England to California. Anna and Eric fall in love, set to get married, but Lily and Harper can't stand each other, highlighting the difficulties of blending families. And that's when we get our body switching moment. Anna and Harper switch bodies, while Lily and Tess swap as well.
"Jamie and Lindsay together in a two-shot is every director's dream," Ganatra said. "I think the fun is that Jamie is so wild and open and carefree and daring, and Lindsay is a little more cautious and guarded. And then she blows open and gets in it with Jamie, and the two of them pull each other towards each other."
As an instant homage to the 2003 movie, Freakier Friday was filmed in the same aspect ratio as films from that time, and coloured and grained in a way to feel like that time period. While not a 2000s movie, Ganatra took particular inspiration from the 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off for Freakier Friday.
"The fun of that movie being a part of this was that the characters that are not the stars are allowed to shine," Ganatra explained. "And I think it's been a while since movies have allowed for that."
"Everybody's so focused on the movie star, ... but Gen Z doesn't really ... care about who the movie star is. They're more about like, what is the story? Is this funny? Should I pay attention? ... And so I feel like the freedom of that being acknowledged, so that we could have every comedy heavy hitter come in and make the most of every part, there isn't one wasted moment. You're not treading water through a scene to get to the next thing with Lindsay and Jamie. Every scene has somebody that shines in it, and I think that's what's so fun about this one."
One element adapted from Freaky Friday is that the new film isn't perpetuating a harmful Asian stereotype, like Freaky Friday did back in 2003 with Chinese restaurant owner Pei-Pei (Rosalind Chao), and her mother, played by Lucille Soong.
"The original movie, I was a fan of. It was a sort of movie of its time, but we needed to acknowledge that we're in current time, ... a lot has changed, thankfully, and that we can be a lot more current," Ganatra said. "The joy for that was to honour those characters and show how they all became a family after that experience, and that they are Harper's godmother, and they're kind of involved in everyone's life, but obviously they have more important things to do than keep switching bodies between people."
Having Manny Jacinto and Sophia Hammons in the film also strengthens the emotional elements of this film around navigating a multicultural blended family.
"A multicultural blended family is really, I think it's just more of my own personal experience and what I know, and how it takes effort and love to keep a family together," Ganatra said. "Your chosen family isn't just going to be there for you all the time if you're not making a lot of effort and [putting] energy into keeping everybody together, and practising that. And I think that's a really beautiful message in the movie, is that we have to honour and prioritize each other for this to work."
"I think that those are my favourite comedies, the ones that take you on an emotional journey. I loved Bridesmaids so much, but the thing I loved about it was the story about Kristen Wiig being afraid of losing her best friend, Maya Rudolph, and that is what made it so funny and so hilarious, but that emotional core is what made me really invested. ... So with [Freakier Friday] it really had to be that story about these two parents who ... are put in charge of raising a whole daughter by themselves, and how did they do that and also find their lives in a fulfilling way. I think that's a really big question for so many of us. How do you pursue all the things, stay responsible to the things that matter to you, and also find place for your love and heart and daily life to expand?"
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