Hotel Mumbai star Nazanin Boniadi: ‘We’re fighting inequality in the west, but in Iran it’s a chasm’

The Iranian-British actor’s parents escaped an oppressive Iranian regime when she was just a baby, she tells Alexandra Pollard. Later, she escaped the indoctrination of scientology and became a fierce human rights advocate

Nazanin Boniadi: 'People like Harvey Weinstein are emboldened, empowered and enabled by a system of people who stay quiet when they witness injustices' (Getty)

Nazanin Boniadi sometimes forgets she has a day job. So preoccupied is she with being a “voice for the voiceless” – be they women in Iran living under an oppressive regime, or young female actors treated badly on set – that it slips her mind that she’s known to most people as the star of Homeland, How I Met Your Mother and, most recently, the biographical thriller Hotel Mumbai.

In truth, she is also known for something she would probably rather forget – scientology. Boniadi was a member of the secretive, controversial religious organisation in the mid-Noughties, and was the subject of a 2012 Vanity Fair cover story, which claimed that she was recruited by the Church of Scientology to be Tom Cruise’s girlfriend.

But she has long since freed herself from the organisation’s grasp. Today, sitting perfectly poised in the tea room of a London hotel, she is willing to talk about it, but would much rather focus on her human rights advocacy, the culpability of those who enabled Harvey Weinstein, and her new film, Hotel Mumbai.

The film, which stars Dev Patel, is set in the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai over the four days in which a series of deadly terrorist attacks were carried out in 2008. In the high-end hotel in which the film is set, several of the terrorists roamed the halls, killing or holding captive hundreds of people. Boniadi plays Zahra, a British-Muslim heiress, who has come to stay at the hotel with her American husband David (Armie Hammer) and their young baby, and find themselves caught in the carnage.

Ahead of the film’s release, Boniadi and I spoke about Iranian oppression, how the film was nearly scuppered by Harvey Weinstein, and why, since leaving the Church of Scientology, she’s realised that “there is nothing more beautiful and profound than realising who you are”.

Was it important to you to make sure the film treats the subject of Islamic terrorism carefully?

The vast majority of people of Muslim background are peace loving. Unfortunately, Hollywood is saturated with stories where we’re fictionalising and creating stereotypes and cliches. The film is, to me, a cautionary tale about extremism and how bad extremism is. It’s not a condemnation of any one religion. These gunmen are manipulated and brainwashed because of abject poverty, because of a lack of education. They’re brought from villages by evil people to commit these atrocities. And their arc in itself is quite sobering. It’s not just bang bang, shoot ‘em up, pure evil versus white saviour.

The men roaming the hotel committed horrible crimes, of course, but the people who orchestrated the attack and gave these men their instructions are still at large in Pakistan.

These gunmen are methodically, robotically killing in cold blood, but they are pawns in a much bigger evil scheme, and the masterminds behind it are the ones who are responsible. They’re not the ones who are becoming martyrs. They’re the ones who are using these impoverished, poorly educated villagers, manipulating them to go and do their dirty work for them. I think if we want to understand extremism, how it’s born and how it’s perpetuated, we have to actually confront these things and understand them, so that we are able to find a way to stop them from happening.

There’s a scene where an older white woman hears Zahra speaking to her mother on the phone in a language she doesn’t recognise, and accuses her of being “one of them”. Is that kind of prejudice something you’ve experienced?

Yeah I’ve experienced it and it’s not pleasant, the sense of not belonging, the sense of being mistrusted. I’ve played roles, like Fara Sherazi on Homeland, who is clearly a protagonist, where there was constantly this suspicion around the character. I would hear, ‘Yeah but I don’t really know what her motives are.’ And you can’t help but wonder, is it because she’s wearing a headscarf? Is it because of the colour of her skin? What is it? Because she’s not doing anything that would make you believe that you should be suspicious of her, outside of those things that you’re used to perceiving as a red flag in your biases. It really is eye opening how audiences react to people based on ethnicity and perceived religion.

Nazanin Boniadi, Dev Patel and Armie Hammer in ‘Hotel Mumbai’ (Film still)

You mentioned earlier wanting to understand extremism. You were a Scientologist for a long time. Did your experience breaking free from that make you more empathetic to people who are indoctrinated in other ways?

I think we all go through things in our personal lives that help shape how we feel about certain things. I think indoctrination... It’s so funny, there is a parallel between theocracy, which is what my parents fled from in Iran, and other forms of brainwashing and indoctrination that might exist on a different, organisational scale. Clare, my character in [sci-fi thriller series] Counterpart, went through a metamorphosis of shedding the things that she’d learned and been forced to believe, or persuaded to believe were true, and to find herself.

There is nothing more beautiful and profound than realising who you are, and not relying on other people to guide you on how to think or who to be. And that was the journey for me that I found really cathartic: whether it’s a theocracy or... something else, trying to shape you, or trying to oppress you, it’s really important to find your inner strength and your resilience and your voice. When you’re thinking, who is it that’s doing the speaking, is it you, or is it something that you’ve been brainwashed to believe is you? It was, yeah, highly cathartic to me to play that role, and Justin Marks did an incredible job of using my personal history to guide season two.

Did you shed your own indoctrination suddenly or gradually?

It’s very gradual. It doesn’t happen overnight, but I think it’s a process of self-discovery and finding yourself and what means the most to you. Part of my activism is informed by that, being a voice for people who don’t have a voice. People deal with trauma, emotional or physical trauma in various ways, and my way of dealing with life in general has been to use whatever I’m feeling either to perform in a role or help other people.

The film was delayed because of the Harvey Weinstein allegations and demise of Miramax. You said in an interview that when something like this happens, there are direct victims and there are peripheral victims. It’s the ripple effect...

... of misogyny. I want to say that it’s more about power than gender and sex, but what we’re faced with right now is that men are mainly in the position of power, and so we’re seeing it so rampantly with men. And as I said, there’s not just the direct victims but the peripheral victims. The number of films that got sidelined after that happened, that were not even really produced by the Weinstein company but were acquired for distribution, as ours was. We managed to get out and find distribution, but there are films that didn’t. And of course, it’s not the same as being sexually harassed or raped because those are life-changing, awful things. But that’s a huge chunk of your life that you’ve invested into something, and to have it not be put out there because of the crimes of one man, it shows you how much negative carnage there is around that kind of mishandling of power.

You say just one man, but there is a whole system in place that allowed this to happen for so long.

Yeah and systemic abuse doesn’t continue unless there are enablers. It’s like a regime, an oppressive regime, if you have a dictator, but he doesn’t have people around him to enable him, he can’t wreak havoc on a population. In the same way, people like Harvey are emboldened, empowered and enabled by a system. People who work for him, who make money off of him, who stay quiet when they witness injustices because they’re thinking about their own personal security or their own personal advancement in life, are accomplices. That’s the thing that we need to break free of, not enabling him and changing the system. And part of it is also raising the confidence and power of women to the point of calling out men like that. And it’s hard, it’s so hard because that power structure is set up to disempower women and empower the predator.

Do you ever see men abusing their power on set?

I make it a rule for myself, if I see a younger actress on set being mistreated by a person in a position of power, and if they feel like they don’t have a voice yet, I will lend my voice. First I go to the younger actress and say, “Do you feel scared? Do you feel like you can’t say anything?” And if I get a sense that that is the case, I’m willing to talk to that power, to prevent that from happening. I feel like we owe it to each other to speak out in those instances and not just be a spectator.

Your character’s of Iranian descent, as are you, though you’re not afraid to call out the Iranian government.

I’m a human rights advocate at the end of the day. I criticise anyone who violates people’s rights and unfortunately the Islamic Republic of Iran, meaning the authorities, the oppression is intolerable. It has been for 40 years now under this current regime. My drive to want to be a voice for the voiceless inside Iran comes from being born in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. My parents were granted political asylum in the UK in 1979 and I was raised in the UK, but partly the reason they left, outside the fact that my parents were political dissidents against this current regime and were at risk of being executed, was because Iran was becoming growingly oppressive, religiously, socially, politically and legally, towards women and girls. They wanted to raise their daughter with as much freedom and opportunity as possible. So when I was raised in England there wasn’t a day that went by that I took my privileges for granted. When I visited Iran in my early teens with my mother, I really decided that I wanted to be a voice for the Iranian people.

And Iranian women in particular?

Yeah. In 2017, we saw the rise of the #MeToo movement and the Time’s Up movements, and the women’s marches in America, and then right at the same time, in December 2017, a woman named Vida Movahed went onto a busy Tehran sidewalk, took off her headscarf, which is a crime in Iran, and peacefully waved it in protest against compulsory hijab. That is not the most oppressive law against Iranian women but it’s become a symbol of their oppression. And she was arrested. The charge that they imprison these women with, who take off their headscarf, is promoting prostitution.

There’s a fear of women that’s underneath the persecution and the oppression of women. It’s always been the case throughout history. But her courage was contagious and it encouraged other women to follow suit. And it’s become a movement now of women doing that, and to me that movement happening at the same time as the women’s marches and Time’s Up is not a coincidence, it’s a convergence, and I want women across the world to realise that this sisterhood should cross borders, otherwise we’re missing a really big opportunity to band together and have a global awakening in women’s rights.

These marches and movements are so important but they can be quite...

Exclusive. Yeah.

And this anti-compulsory hijab movement isn’t something I’m anywhere near as familiar with, which is partly my own fault.

No it’s not your fault, it’s not out there. I don’t think the media talks enough about what’s happening inside Iran. And yeah, there are limitations to what journalists can report from inside the country because there’s such a crackdown on free speech and expression, but a young woman just set herself on fire and died because she was protesting the fact that women can’t enter sporting stadiums to watch sporting events. And she had a favourite football team that she just wanted to support, and she had to dress up as a man to go in. And she was arrested and her final act of protest was to self-immolate, to set herself on fire, and she died.

She’s become known as Blue Girl, a symbol of how oppressed women are in Iran. So yeah we do owe it to our sisters in Iran to be their voices. You don’t have to be Iranian for that, but the media’s not covering it, so my hope is that I help spread the word of what’s happening in Iran. I care deeply. It’s a part of me. And I sometimes have to remember that I have a day job.

You mentioned that the hijab is not the most substantial way in which women are being oppressed in Iran. What are some of the most substantial ways?

The legal age of marriage for girls is 13, they can get married at nine if a judge and their guardian signs off. But there’s also other things. Iran is ranked 116 out of 153 countries on legal discrimination against women. That’s a very poor ranking. Women need their husband’s permission to travel, for example. Before the law, it takes the testimony of two women to weigh against one man. A woman has to get her husband’s permission to work. It’s endless. We’re fighting inequality in the west, but in Iran it’s a chasm.

Did you have experiences of gender inequality when you visited Iran?

Yes, I was 13 and my uncle was 45 or so, and we were walking down a street in Tehran, and a plain-clothed militia came and said, “Please produce a marriage certificate.” And I thought, “I’m already being forced to wear a headscarf on my head...” The sexualising of a young girl who hasn’t even really gone through puberty is so abhorrent to me. So that was really jarring to me. It was really sobering to me. This cannot be how we treat girls in Iran.

Iran doesn’t have a good reputation when it comes to LGBT+ rights either. You kissed a woman in Counterpart, and said you were worried about the Iranian response, but presumably there will have been queer Iranian women who were watching?

Absolutely. The truth is that my fear of it came from a place that was so misguided. It was definitely not something as an artist that I should care about, because it’s a story and it’s fictional, and who cares if I’ve not done it before? That fear, a lot of it came from cultural indoctrination. Of, “what will people think?” I’m realising as I grow older that you can’t live your life for what other people might think, you just have to stay true to yourself. Yes, there is cultural stigma, because the LGBTQ community in Iran is highly persecuted. But one way of overcoming that is the depiction of an Iranian actress doing that, and that is breaking stigmas and stereotypes in its own way. It was a challenge that I’m really glad I took, and a fear that I’m really glad I overcame.

Hotel Mumbai is out in cinemas now