Freida Pinto is promoting Mr. Malcolm’s List, a project she stars in and executive produced. She worked for four years to get this period romantic-comedy made. I also forgot that Freida got married (to Cory Tran) and they live mostly in Austin, Texas, and that she welcomed a son (Rumi-Ray) last November. She has a lot going on, and she sounds very busy in this Glamour interview. She chats about motherhood, color-blind casting and why people love period romances. Some highlights:
The multiracial cast of Mr. Malcolm’s List: “The idea was that [the director] Emma [Holly Jones] had just watched Hamilton and she was so inspired by it that she wanted to make Mr. Malcolm’s List in the same world as Hamilton, where we are multiracial, but we’re not really spending any time talking about race and we’re not spending any time trying to justify our presence in this film. She just wanted this movie to be a romantic comedy about people who fall in love.”
Bridgerton happened after they were pitching the movie: “The Bridgerton effect impacted us getting financed, but didn’t impact the movie because the idea already existed even before Bridgerton, that this is how we wanted to do it.”
Why people love period romances: “One of the things that I’m thinking of right at the top of my head is that we all think about a time before cell phones, before technology. Everything was slower… We have all of these emotions that we crave for every single day in our lives. And like our crazy dating world today, where we just can’t seem to find the person who feels like a perfect match—in so many ways, all of that existed, even before Tinder and Bumble and all of it, and I feel there’s something magical about the slowness of that time.
People don’t write letters anymore: “I don’t mean it in a boring way, but the slowness is almost romantic in many ways—the writing of letters, as opposed to sending an “ILU” on a text message, or sending out an emoji. There’s almost the charm of really putting your heart into something. And I feel like going back to the period movies constantly is a reminder of the slowness and the beauty of that time. And then of course, if you think of the universality of the themes, you know, [like] how women were treated in society then, and how they are looked in society today. I mean, not to get too dark, but women don’t even have rights today in certain parts of the world, including our own.
Talking about her postpartum journey: “Yeah, I invested in this company called Anya, I’m the chief impact officer and that all happened very organically. I come from a culture in India where the postpartum journey is so nurtured and it’s so important. The first 30 to 40 days after giving birth, the mother is taken care of, food is prepared for her, she is almost not allowed to get out of bed because she’s resting and healing from either the stitches, or if she had a C-section, she’s healing from the surgery because C-section is a very serious surgery. So for me, it was so important that I created my own postpartum sanctuary based on my Indian upbringing and culture, and then I realized that so many women have had horror stories—postpartum, like the first 30 days is hell and breastfeeding is not an easy journey at all…”
Why America’s attitude towards birth & postpartum needs to change: “[I also want to] spread the message on why the postpartum period is very important, why policy in this country needs to change towards women in general—I’m not even gonna go there, because that’s one of the most exhausting conversations and I’m so angered right now that I think I’ll just start spewing venom, so I think I’m just gonna stay away from that for a bit—but why it is so important for women after they’ve given birth to not feel the pressure to go back to work within six weeks, or three weeks. Maternity leave in this country is so badly handled, and so whatever support we can provide women given the circumstances that we are in, knowing that that policy change might take a long time, knowing that having [only] that one doctor’s visit at six weeks is ridiculous—women need to be checked in on more often—knowing that all of this was what we have been put up against, it became even more important for me to use my platform and to amplify other ways in which women can be supported.”
This interview was conducted in late June, so she was raging about the Dobbs verdict and also the general lack of support for mothers and children in America. Which is absolutely true – as states began enacting forced birth laws, they also completely avoided making laws to actually help mothers and children. The point is cruelty. The point is to punish women. And she’s absolutely right about maternity leave. As for what she says about romance and why we like period romances… she’s right about that too. Handwritten letters are romantic. A properly paced romance is exciting. Yearning is important.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar.
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- New York, NY – 6/29/22 – “ Mr. Malcom’s List “ New York Screening at DGA and VIP reception at L’ Avenue at SAKS -PICTURED: Freida Pinto -PHOTO by: Dave Allocca/ StarPix -Location: DGA Theatre
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- New York, NY – 6/29/22 – “ Mr. Malcom’s List “ New York Screening at DGA and VIP reception at L’ AVENUE at SAKS -PICTURED: Freida Pinto -PHOTO by: Dave Allocca/ StarPix -Location: L’ AVENUE AT SAKS
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- Freida Pinto at the afterparty for Mr. Malcolm’s List in midtown at L’Avenue on June 30, 2022 in New York city.,Image: 703959806, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Darla Khazei / Avalon
Speaking from experience, navigating “maternity leave” in the country is traumatizing. Not just the corporate arena, but also the culture. Everyone thinks you should be able to immediately get up and be active right away.
Let me guess, most of those people are men. When I was in college I remember being in my BIO 101 lab class and the instructor had the class watch a video of a woman giving birth. I was covering my eyes for most the video. I couldn’t believe just how painful and stressful giving birth is. It is very insensitive and downright mean to expect women to just get up and go back to work the next day. I am a guy by the way but I have a lot of respect for women during maternity.
Not always men. Women, especially white women, do a lot of heavy lifting to uphold patriarchy.
In my case, my white American mother in law was BEYOND judgemental and snarky that I followed the “sleep when the baby sleeps” schedule, exclusively breast fed, etc. She seemed to think this was… Wait for it … Unfair to her son.
Like, how dare I expect him to feed me so I could feed the baby? How lazy of me to be sleeping in the middle of the day! How absurd that she couldn’t hold the baby when she wanted bc either I was nursing or the baby was sleeping (and shouldn’t be awakened he was a terrible sleeper)! How insulting that I politely ignored her advice (from the 70s) that was entirely about “making it easier” so I could “get other stuff done”!
Like, what other stuff? What did I need to do, exactly, that was more important, you ask? Well let me tell you that making myself LOOK MORE PRESENTABLE was high on her list. I just had a baby, and this woman was actively shaming me for “letting myself go”…
So yeah. I get why Frieda had to stop herself from “spewing venom.” I’m south Asian as well and just couldn’t believe it
@Lurker25 Unbelievable. At least is sounds like your husband supported you through that period! It’s a shame you couldn’t count on her too.
I am terrified about postpartum time off. I am working on being a single mother by choice and have a very demanding job in the fashion industry, I am super scared that I will not be able to spend much time with my future baby because I would have to be pushed to get back to work or loose my job. It’s terrifying to be the only source of income and also not being able to enjoy such precious bonding moments.
About five days after I gave birth to my second child, I was coming back from shopping, carrying in tons of groceries and one of my older neighbors saw me and was aghast. She told me that in her culture, I would still be in bed for a month just caring for the baby and resting. I was like, “I can’t even imagine that!”
Actually supporting mothers and babies postpartum would be such a refreshing and absolutely radical change of pace for our society.
Women in the US need to fight for maternity leave. In my country you’re entitled to 6 months (and I think it should be more). You do have breastfeeding leave for 2 years (you earn the same but work less hours)…
Capitalism at its “best” (worst)
One of my associates at work is from Europe and he is always pointing out just much vacation time they get automatically when they start a new job. They really have a better system in Europe.
I was bringing in groceries right after because my legal spouse was so busy googling for hours on end after his work day, during which he had read all of the cnn/huffington post/apnews/NewYorkPost/Slate articles.
I bet there’s a lot of exhausted women out there who have a guy who edits in front of other people but is an absolute scrub once the door to the house closes and it’s just them. Once the baby comes it’s harder to leave and some of them count on it.
The discussion about the horrible post partum experience of women never seems to include societal condemnation of the lazy entitled legal spouses. They get off the hook every time. And saying just leave them isn’t a fair choice for the baby, because then the woman knows there’s an actually defenseless baby in solo custody of said scrub, or, alternatively, the guy hurried up and gets Tits McGee who probably isn’t going to really muscle up for the baby of a guy she recently met.
What maternity leave? I have never had any separate paid parental leave anywhere I have worked, only the “option” of running out any banked leave and then going on unpaid leave, and disability payment if your state allows it. It is beyond terrible and people wonder why folks don’t want to have kids.
Yeah, I remember a colleague from the first job I had out of college back in the early aughts had to save all of her vacation days and then work out a plan to take FMLA at the end of the time off she had to get an extra measly couple of weeks. I was young and had know idea how just how messed up this was.
We I had my last back in 2019 my husband who worked for a very large insurance company that I’m sure you all have heard of and they literally had just implemented parental leave that year before so we got to have him home for 8 full week paid and thought it was like the best thing ever. So sad.
Same for me @Erin.
In 2019, I had 8 weeks maternity leave, but had to use my 2 weeks PTO and then take 6 weeks unpaid. I didn’t have the option to have 10 weeks.
My husband was working for the government at the time and we had excellent benefits. He got to be home for 3 weeks PAID.
Its so frustrating. I really hate this country sometimes.
If you come from one of many cultures where people giving birth were particularly protected and attended to and cared for in the first 40 days or six weeks after giving birth, you know the US is in a category of its own when it comes to postpartum disregard.
Living in Europe all my life I still really struggle to understand how the US still has such (to my mind) unreasonable attitudes to healthcare (how on earth can you live in the US in 2022 and die because you can’t afford your cancer treatment???), maternity leave, and paid holiday/vacation time generally. I get that this is capitalism and greed at it’s very worst but how do employers not appreciate that by actually treating your employees well you get a lot more out of them? It m makes me so angry that people are treated so poorly.
@ SarahCS, the US is at the bottom of healthcare and much worse for cases of fetal death regarding Black women. Our HC system is rigged all to the benefits of the insurance companies NOT those that are on the receiving end. The fact that the US government has not mandated any standard of maternity leave is a blatant example that women are still considered second class citizens. We are not provided with the best care, the best treatments nor the adequate time needed in the hospital. The insurance companies decide how long you are in the hospital after delivery and it shouldn’t be in the hands on the insurance companies, it should be up the the physicians!!
We must take the power away from the insurance companies and they must be mandated and follow a certain criteria. Unfortunately in the House and Senate the lobbyist are always buzzing in their ears about protecting their power as well as the enormous amount of money that they make as well.
I must also add that their is a great deal of racism in the HC industry as well. We read about it happening still to this day, which is appalling and unacceptable as well.
We are so brain washed by our current shitty patriarchal capitalist system in this country. It’s all about being the best employee, the one who does the most. And that’s expected. So 8 hrs? Big deal fo 10 and you are only doing what you should. Have cancer? Oh ok use your PTO and don’t think no one else has problems. Then they spring the old “you know do and so came to work and threw up in a bucket” line to demonstrate how much you should be happy to suffer. My old boss gave 6 weeks at half pay and called several times a day to get my coworker to feel guilty to come back early. So disgusting.
Our system is barbaric. I once has a boss tell me about a colleague that worked while in labor. Since I was union member, and my job was protected, I straight up told them, “Yeah, I won’t be doing that.”
Maternity and family leave is dismal and the discourse around it is even worse. There is this attitude if “ well you choose to have a child, why should we pay for it” which is both callous and ignorant, especially post Roe when they don’t even want to properly treat pregnant women. I love Hamilton and Bridgerton so really want to see this movie. As for the color blind casting, it’s light and frothy but it really sanitizes an overlooked historical period that actually had a lot of brutality, suppression and colonial expansion. All of the big empires still practiced slavery and there were brutal suppressions of workers demanding rights. I do hope this color blind casting leads to more research and stories of the actual lives of people of color during that time period, whether fictional or based on facts, because the stories are there to be told.
Well said @ L4Frimaire!!
We get 18 months now in canada
My son’s dad and I broke up while I was pregnant. My mom stayed for a few days after the birth and then I was completely alone with my child. She came once a week. The first 2 years were the loneliest of my life, even though I had my child. I’m still completely alone with my son and he’s 12 now. My job didn’t offer any paid leave so I had to figure that out too. This country absolutely punishes mothers.
I am so sorry @delphine, that you went through this alone. You are so right about lack of support for new moms and then lack of child care when moms go back to work. Being alone without a safety net is really tough. Hugs to you.
I’m not sure why people glorify periods before ours. Yes, they didn’t have cell phones but they also had not a lot to do. Think of how boring their lives must have been. There’s only so much farming or whatever you can do. i love books and okay maybe sitting around reading May have been nicer but also not as many books, and they were expensive. Not to mention the deplorable conditions. Sorry but I love running hot water.
And dating? We have choice. It was probably so much easier to meet someone and then marry them within a span of 6 weeks because what else can you do? Have you ever watched old movies? The characters are “in love” within 2 days. They conflated lust with love and that has ruined our ideas of what it means to find a suitable person to settle down with. They couldn’t divorce, they couldn’t have sex before marriage. And letter writing? Imagine having to wait 6 months for one letter. No thanks. Simpler times? Yes, but also simple in the most negative sense. Perhaps we have too much choice now, but you gotta pick your poison.
Delphine,
Wow. That’s a lot.
In that scenario, I would feel exactly zero guilt about putting my mother in to a nursing home when the day came.
I am so sorry you had to go through that.
Wow, that’s mean! You don’t know what Delphine’s mother’s circumstances were. She may have had a full-time job (or multiple jobs) that she couldn’t take time off from.
Yeah, my son is now 14 weeks and, as much as I love him, I don’t see us having another. Not only is maternity leave severely lacking, but paternity leave is severely lacking too, which in turn impacts women. My husband was supposed to take his vacation time, but they forced him to come back early (!). I was still in pain from my c section and couldn’t even hold my baby due to carpal tunnel from pregnancy. We had no help from grandparents. The worst surgery I’d ever been through and no recovery time. Never again.
C-section is the only surgery with no recovery and a tiny person to take care of immediately after. Stupid appendicitis and they tell you to rest and relax. Pregnancy, C-section and voila! Get up woman, you have work to do. I am grateful mine was uncomplicated.
Yet, 5 years later I still hesitate whether to have another baby. We live far from family and with one child my ability to work is already impacted. Mind you, I live in Europe and have one year paid maternity leave (I won’t even start on maternity leave in USA, it’s barbaric). Still, life goes on after this one year and my career is ok-is only because I am lucky to have all-female, understanding team. I like to work, I’ve invested a lot to become a professional and there is really no choice for me to stop working because we need two incomes to manage.
Here’s what happened in this country. We started with women assuming child rearing and housekeeping duties while the men held paying jobs outside of the home. For formerly enslaved people and their children, there was no separation of duties for women. Many times, they were working to raise other people’s children while relatives took care of their children. Their children had short childhoods due to lack of access to education. That alone should have kicked off a movement to level the playing field but people didn’t consider the formerly enslaved to be equals. Anyway fast forward to the 1970s and 1980s. Women had more rights that didn’t leave them tied to men. The unspoken trade off was don’t ask us for any help with “your” other obligations (home/kids). Women cobbled together support systems and made it work. Now these women are retired and instead of saying “that sucked, let’s make it easier for others “ they say “screw you – now it’s your turn”. They are backed by conservative men of all ages. Women currently in the sh*t are too over stretched to fight for what they need so the cycle continues.