After the viral Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest held in New York City in October, several other contests began to pop up across the globe, from a Harry Styles one in London to a Paul Mescal one in Dublin. Oscar-nominated actor Dev Patel got his very own lookalike competition in San Francisco in November in an event that gathered over 500 people. When asked whether he had heard about the event, the actor instantly laughs and lets out a hearty: “Oh, yes. I have heard all about it!”
“I’m surprised more than five people showed up,” he continues. “I was quite overwhelmed by it and very touched. I also gotta say that I think most of the men who showed up were far more handsome and qualified than I am. I think I would have lost at my own lookalike contest, for sure.”
Patel says he found the whole contest to be “really amazing” while also being “shocked at the sheer amount of people that showed up.” The organizers behind the event said that they had originally planned to run a Robert Pattinson lookalike contest but wanted to represent their local — and growing — Indian community in San Francisco. And who better than Patel?
“Hopefully, I am just the gateway to this happening to all sorts of brilliant actors of different races and genders,” he emphasizes. “It was refreshing to see a community come together like that and, hey, if there is ever a moment where I can be associated with some form of laughter and joy, it’s great. It is all good.”
As for his next projects, Patel says he “can’t say much” about Tarsem Singh’s tennis crime thriller “The Journeyman” as it is still very “early days.” He has, however, just wrapped Bryn Chainey’s “Rabbit Trap” alongside “Blue Jean” and “Harvest” breakout Rosy McEwen. Of his co-star, Patel says she is a “phenomenal” actor — “one of the best I’ve been lucky to share a screen with.” “Rabbit Trap” is produced by Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah’s SpectreVision and marks Chainey’s feature debut.
“It was so fun,” he continues, saying that he managed to “squeeze in” the film while editing his directorial debut “Monkey Man.” Set in 1973, the film tells the story of a couple of musicians who accidentally record a mystical sound never before heard by human ears. Asked when he will be at the director’s chair next, the actor says that he has “a lot of interesting things” that he is currently developing and will be able to “talk about very soon” but didn’t share much on it.
Patel, who is at the Red Sea Film Festival as part of a series of talks at the festival’s market arm, highlights that a lot of his last few years have been spent trying to grow his production company, Minor Realm. “A lot of it has to do with the name itself. It’s about minority representation, the unsung stories, and a realm for those more ignored existences to really flourish and exist.”
“I recently put my name behind a documentary called ‘To Kill a Tiger,’ which was incredible,” he continues. “It’s a heartbreaking, moving story of a young girl’s fight for justice with her father in a rural village in India. We were able to not only provide funding for them but also get a second lease of life in the press and get the team to a place where they got an Oscar nomination without a distributor.”
Using his platform to champion minority voices is one of Patel’s greatest missions in the industry. He says arriving in Saudi Arabia felt “very similar” to the first time he landed in India. “There is a real hunger to grow and people are so excited to be a part of the filmmaking process. You feel that here, certainly in terms of growth. For me in particular there is a great trifecta of diaspora from Africa, the Middle East and India coalescing here, which is a really cool space to be — especially for someone who looks like me and is trying to tell the stories I want to tell.”
“I see us all, everyone who showed up here, as ambassadors of cinema in a way,” he adds. “The floodgates have opened and we are here to promote the joys and the power of filmmaking as a medium, to nourish a society, make them more empathetic and expose them to the world. It’s also an opportunity for places like Jeddah to expose their values and cultures to the world, too. It’s a wonderful exchange.”
As for arriving at the festival in the role of a mentor for a young generation, Patel says he feels blessed but that the word “mentor” feels “weird”. “I forever feel like a curious kind of student. Even as the director, I am learning from the DP or the other actors around me, the production designer… I think I will forever feel like that.”
