A handful of new movies are making their way into theaters this weekend, but one that should definitely be on your radar is Polite Society, a wholly original and fun action-comedy from first-time feature film writer-director Nida Manzoor. The film follows teenage aspiring stuntwoman Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) who becomes convinced that her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) is about to marry into a nefarious, setting the high schooler on a mission to save Lena and delete the forces of evil who are coming between the siblings.
PopCulture.com had a chance to speak with Manzoor about the new movie, and she opened up about what it was like to film her first major motion picture, and what it was like to work with her “captivating” lead actresses. Offering some background on the movie, Manzoor shared, “I wrote the first draft of it over 10 years ago. It’s been a long, long road. I’ve been over those years constantly redrafting it, trying to get it made, but really struggling to find a home. Producers struggled to see what it could be, but I was very lucky. Television opened up for me and I got to learn my craft through directing Dr. Who, through writing on kids’ TV, and I got to make my own show, We Are Lady Parts, where I sort of found my voice.”
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The partnership proved to be a fruitful one as Working Title, the producing studio behind We Are Lady Parts, eventually reached out to see if Manzoor had any movie ideas. “I was like, I’ve got this weird film,” she quipped, then voting that the studio agreed and then urged her to “make it even weirder” if she could. “So they really empowered me to do my thing on it,” Manzoor said. “I feel really lucky. It’s been 10 years, but I feel like I got to be more experienced when I made it.”
The filmmaker went on to note that she had always intended to film Polite Society herself, rather than handing the script off to another filmmaker. “I was writing, directing short films before,” Manzoor explained. “They were short action comedies, there were sort of teenage girls fighting or in a games arcade, and I was always trying to prove myself as not only a writer but as a director. I wanted to bring this to screen.”
Among the many positive things that have been said about Polite Society are comparisons to films from other acclaimed writer-directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright. While those elements are certainly noticeable, it might be utilizing aspects of Nickelodeon’s classic ’90s movie Harriet The Spy that make Polite Society stand out further from similar movie. “I was obsessed with Harriet The Spy. That was my first film,” Manzoor said with joy, noting that she definitely sees how her movie is a little bit like Harriet The Spy.
One way Manzoor accomplished this is by casting Kansara as Ria, the intrinsically inquisitive and headstrong lead character who is desperate to become her fictional alter ego: a martial arts expert known as “The Fury.”
“She went into bootcamp immediately,” the director explained, revealing that Kansara started working on her character as soon as she landed the role. “We had six, seven weeks. She was doing fight training, dance training, acting rehearsals. She was meeting with Ritu loads on her own to create that sister chemistry. But she came into the audition and she was immediately outstanding.”
Manzoor continued, “Just as soon as we put the camera on her, you’re like, she’s a movie star. She’s just so captivating. She could do the teen act, she could do the comedy. She had physicality and she has so much heart. The character is problematic and annoying at times, but she is so much kind of goodness emanating through that. She kind of carries this movie and yeah, man, I got so lucky when she came in I was like, ‘OK, now I have a film.”
Speaking on the on-screen/off-screen sisterly chemistry between Kansara and Arya, Manzoor explained that she and the film’s producers did not have a chance to assess the pair together before film, but they all soon learned that the pair were perfect together. “The schedule was such that I cast Ritu and we were still looking for our Ria but then when I saw Priya, I was like, ‘OK, I think these two are going to work,’ and I was just like, ‘Please universe, please movie Gods make it work.’ As soon as they got together it was like instant chemistry and I was like, ‘thank God, thank God…’ They worked so hard. They hung out, they had brunch, they did everything and they kind of really, really found that sister-bond.”
While Kansara had to learn to fight upon landing the role, it turns out that Arya already had some training under her belt from her role as Lila Pitts in Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. “She was really trying to improve the fights, adapt the fights to her,” Manzoor said of how Arya approached the action sequences. “She knew what she could do and she knew what her skillset was.”
The director continued, “That was really inspiring for Priya, who’s newer to the acting scene. I think they genuinely had this sort of sisterly bond where Ritu was really kind of showing Priya what she could do. Priya was learning from Ritu’s experience as an actor. Ritu had a lot that she could bring to the film, but also I’d worked with her. She was in a Doctor Who episode that I directed and previously in a short, so I love working with Ritu. I really know her as an actor and as a friend and it was exciting to get to work with her again.”
Polite Society is packed full of fun and exciting action sequences, but there was one that Manzoor confessed she might have reworked in the script had she known how hard it was going to be to pull off during filming.
“There’s a fight in the school and me and my DP, Ashley Connor, we got so excited by this location,” she shared. “We found it was a school library at an all-girls school, but it was round like a gladiator ring and I was like, ‘We’ve got to shoot here,’ but it’s 360 windows. It’s impossible to light it. The light is constantly going up and down. So it was a nightmare.”
To make matters worse, Manzoor revealed, “It was at the height of COVID, of Omicron, so we had lots of actors going down and, honestly, I don’t know how we got through that fight scene. We had to keep adapting it. If you look at the teenage girl continuity, there’s no continuity that it was lucky the costumes are so cute.”
She went on to add, “Those days we were just like, ‘Oh my God, how are we going to get through this?’ And it’s just having Priya being so up for it, working hard, getting on the wire, going again, and our producers just kind of managing fighting fires in the background so COVID didn’t spread into the set… Those days were stressful. That school fight was just, every time I watch it, a little bit of PTSD.”
Thankfully, no matter how difficult some of the scenes may have been, Manzoor knew she had an ace up her sleeve in editor Robbie Morrison, who she says “is a legend.” She added, “He’s an incredible editor. He’s cut every comedy I’ve ever directed. It’s cut by Robbie Morrison because he knows rhythm, he understands that pacing. He’s just an incredibly talented and talented editor and the best.”
Finally, Manzoor admitted that she isn’t yet sure if Polite Society will spawn a franchise, but she has not been short on ideas from her cast. “Every single actor on set has pitched me their version of Polite Society… Priya has pitched me one where Ria a stunt woman, and then the two friends, Seraphina and Ella who play the sidekicks, they’re like, ‘We can have a spinoff!’
She continued, “There’s excitement from the crew because I think and the cast, we had such a good time making it and only now I’m still kind of coming out the other side, but it was a fun world to play in. Part of me is kind of excited at the thought of doing a second Polite Society 2. Why not make my own franchise? They were like, ‘People are going to want you on this.’ I’m like, ‘Maybe I’ll do my own.’” Polite Society is now playing in theaters. Click here for showtimes.
