ActorRajiv Surendra—perhaps better known as mathlete and sick emcee Kevin Gnapoor from 2004 cult classicMean Girls—says he was left mourning after missing out on the titular role inThe Life of Pi.
Surendra, who dropped out of college to rigorously train for the role, recently opened up to GQ about the six years that he spent preparing, the uncertainty thatThe Life of Piwould see the big screen, and the crushing disappointment when his sacrifice didn’t pay off.
“While we were shootingMean Girlsduring my first year of college, I found out they were turningThe Life of Piinto a film,” Surendra said. Based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Yann Martel,The Life of Pitells the story of the young Pi Patel, stranded at sea with a ferocious tiger named Richard Parker.
“I was determined to get that part. So I dropped out of college to go to the little town in India where the book takes place so that I could do some in-depth research. I did that for a few months and came back and was just waiting for them to start production. I assumed that it was going to happen any day now and it didn’t. They lost their director and the project ended up getting put on hold so I went back to college.”
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Surendra Says Losing Life of PiRole was ‘Traumatic’
With original director M. Night Shyamalan out andThe Life of Picycling through directors, Surendra never gave up on preparing for the film.
Eventually, the script found its home with director Ang Lee—and unfortunately for Surendra, Lee chose newcomer Suraj Sharma for the role of Pi.
“I felt like someone had died. Very slowly over the course of six years, I was building this boy that was a character in a book. By the end of those years, that was a real person inside of me,” Surendra, who has turned his recent attentions to pottery, calligraphy, and graphic design said.
“Those old Tamil songs I listened to as a kid, Pi would’ve listened to those songs. When I got the email saying I didn’t get the part, I felt like that person just died instantly.”
Along with the death of the “person” he’d be growing with for over half a decade came the mourning.
“It was traumatic. I think I was in shock for a couple weeks. I felt dead inside for a long time,” he added.
