PBS高端访谈:美国男演员和好莱坞的故事（在线收听）

NICK SCHIFRIN: Finally tonight, a Brief But Spectacular on taking on stereotypes in Hollywood. Actor and singer Utkarsh Ambudkar's latest film is Brittany Runs a Marathon. Once again, as part of our Canvas series, he reflects on how he has adopted to Hollywood and Hollywood has adopted to him.

UTKARSH AMBUDKAR, Actor and Rapper: As a South Asian man, the roles that we get are very finite. And I say no to quite a few things. Like, we don't do computer nerds and we don't do sidekicks. So, music and acting have always gone hand in hand for me. I was in a hip-hop group, a trio, much like the Beastie Boys. How did Pitch Perfect happen? Let's rewind, guys. Mindy Kaling saw Pitch Perfect. I got offered the role of her little brother, Rishi, on The Mindy Project. White Famous was for Showtime. That role was written for a light-skinned black actor. I improvised an Indian South Asian spin on that role in the room. I have been acting professionally since 2005. Around 2018 is when people realized, asking me to do an accent when it wasn't period or geographically appropriate was offensive. Now I can walk into a room and call it out, and people kind of have to, they accept it.

QUESTION: What does that conversation sound like in the room?

UTKARSH AMBUDKAR: So I have been in auditions where they wrote a line in their show about an Indian teacher with a strong accent saying that he would sell 10 goats to get a woman like that in his classroom. So this is offensive. And I told my manager, no, there's no way I'm going to do this. My manager said, OK, go in. You can put your own spin on it. They're fine. So I go and I do my no accent and my improvisation. He said, Can you just do it the way that I wrote it? You want me to do it the way you wrote it, like, even this line about the goats? The sauce on what I said was so thick that there was only one interpretation to take from it. And that's not how you do business and it's not how we should communicate with each other. In any case, that's my responsibility, but his responsibility is to not write a piece of that's offensive, right? Now, when I walk into a room and it just happened on Mulan. I just went and did this Disney movie, and there were some challenges with sort of the way that our ethnicities were being portrayed. And I was able to go into the room with Disney. I mean, it's a giant conglomerate. And the script was changed and moved around and built and enhanced to sort of speak to some of the concerns that we had. You would think that's just how it's supposed to go, but it's one of the first few times that it's starting to happen for me where I can be like, hey, I see a problem here, and people actually listen. My name is Utkarsh Ambudkar, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on making it up as I go along.

NICK SCHIFRIN: You can find additional Brief But Spectacular episodes on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.

尼克·斯齐弗林：今晚的《简短而精彩》将关注好莱坞的典型。演员兼歌手乌特卡什·安邦德卡尔最近出演了一部电影《她的马拉松》。本期节目也是帆布系列的内容。在本期节目中，乌特卡什·安邦德卡尔将回顾自己和好莱坞彼此适应的过程。

乌特卡什·安邦德卡尔，演员、饶舌歌手：我是南亚人，我们能接到的角色十分有限。我们经常会拒绝很多角色。比如，我们不会演电脑迷，也不会演密友的角色。对我来说，音乐和演戏是分不开的。我之前是一个街舞团的成员，那时候，我们共有3个成员，很像野兽男孩的组合。《完美音调》这部电影是如何促成的呢？回想一下那时候，是敏迪·卡灵发现了《完美音调》。他推荐我出演《明迪烦事多》里她的小弟弟瑞许。《白闻名》也上映了，我出演的那个角色是为浅肤色的黑人演员写的。我在房间里即兴表演了南亚人对那个角色的理解。

自从2005年开始，表演就成了我的职业。2018年左右，人们意识到，在时间和地理位置不合适的时候让我去发某种“合适”口音的行为是很不礼貌的。现在，我走进片场说出这种话的时候，人们似乎不得不接受这个事实。

问：房间里的对话大概是什么样的呢？乌特卡什·安邦德卡尔：我之前试镜的时候，他们给秀写了一段台词，内容关于一位印度老师有很浓的口音，他在教室里说自己卖了10只山羊，才换到了一个女人。这就很不尊重人。我跟自己的经理人说，不，我不可能给这段剧情试镜。我的经理人说，没问题，你还是可以去，只是用自己的方式来表达，他们不会说什么的。于是我走进去，用自己的口音做了即兴表演。他说，你能用写的方式来表演吗？你想让我以你写的方式来表演，甚至连关于山羊的这段也要如出一辙吗？他们给我的回应太过强烈，只能用一种方式来解读。这不是做电影的方式，也不是我们彼此沟通的方式。在任何情况下，表演是演员的义务，但他的义务是不要写一段不尊重人的剧情，难道不是吗？现在，我每次走进片场，《花木兰》的拍摄就不会像之前那样。我走进片场，演了这部迪士尼电影，有一些挑战是我要面临描绘种族划分的剧情。我现在走进迪士尼的片场，这里是很大的熔炉。剧本会变动、会加强，会考虑到我们担心的问题。大家可能会觉得事情本来就应该是这个样子，但这是我最开始感受到——我发现问题了，而人们会去倾听。我是乌特卡什·安邦德卡尔，这是我本期带来的《简短而精彩》，我分享的是在好莱坞里的一些感受。

尼克·斯齐弗林：其他期的节目可以在官网PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief看到。