Kubbra Sait opens up on her international debut with Apple TV+ series Foundation

January 11, 2020 is a date that Kubbra Sait isn’t going to forget in a hurry. “I got a call from my agent saying that I am going to be Phara. A big blob of sweat dropped from the crown of my head down my back and I thought to myself, ‘Okay, I am going to take a moment to let this sink in’,” Sait shares on a recent phone call as one can almost hear her big toothy smile. In the year and a half since, the actress, who first made a splash as Kukoo from Sacred Games, has had ample time and space to process the fact that she’s a part of AppleTV+ show Foundation that’s based on Isaac Asimov’s celebrated Foundation series of novels. And yet, “It still feels like yesterday“, she says. “When you want something really bad and it then happens, I think it just humbles you.”Among one of the greatest sci-fi stories ever, Foundation was considered unfilmable until series creators David S Goyer (Da Vinci’s Demons) and Josh Friedman (who developed Snowpiercer for TV) stepped in. The saga, spanning centuries, chronicles the fall of a Galactic Empire that has stood for over 12,000 years. Sait joins the show’s illustrious cast that includes Lee Pace, Jared Harris and Terrance Mann. The 38-year-old plays Phara Keaen, a Grand Huntress from the planet Anacreon who has a grudge against the Empire.Before casting director Tess Joseph called Sait to audition for the show in 2019, she hadn’t tested for any international projects. “What was unique about this was that it was a global casting. Phara could have been from anywhere in the world. It just happens to be me.” The experience of the actual audition was also very new for her. “I wear a nose-pin and they asked me to remove it, along with all other jewellery. I was asked to be dressed in a plain black singlet and pants. It was a mid-shot and all they wanted to see was if I could communicate Phara through my eyes and face.” This was followed by a screen test in Ireland, where the show was shot. It took about six months before she was confirmed and she finished shooting for the show in March 2021. “The timelines really help in understanding how ginormous the show really is.”[caption id="attachment_10044181" align="alignnone" width="640"]

Kubbra Sait in a still from Foundation[/caption]Before Foundation came her way, Sait wouldn’t have described herself as an Asimov or even a sci-fi fan. “It’s a genre that I have now become a fan of after realising how futuristic it really is. Everyone I have spoken to about Asimov’s books has told me how they were an integral part of their childhoods. Also, every sci-fi show has been fired by Asimov and his ideas.” It did, though, take her a while to understand the world created by the author. “You need to understand who the Brothers Day, Dawn and Dusk are and how they are connected with each other. There’s a 400-year gap in the story and a 17-year leap which brings us to the time the story is set in. And, you have to understand all of this to make sense of why a character is behaving in a certain way.”Show creator Goyer has made significant changes to the source material. These include the introduction of concepts like a ‘genetic dynasty’ – three constantly differently aged clones of the same man who rules the empire. The series also improves on the lack of gender and racial diversity in the book. Several key characters from the book who were men, like Gaal Dornick (played by Lou Llobell), are now female. “For a show creator to make such a mammoth show and say ‘I don’t care where my actors come from’ is nothing short of incredible and that’s why I think David Goyer is a genius.” Sait’s Phara is one of the characters that wasn’t a part of the original story, much like the character she played in Netflix’s Sacred Games. She describes Phara as ‘wild and unapologetic’. “I have never played someone with as much grief and fury as this character. She is absolutely fearless and is driven by a singular motive in her life.”Foundation is a big step in Sait’s fledgling acting career. She moved to Mumbai from Dubai, where she was a marketing specialist at Microsoft for over a decade, in the early 2010s. She started by hosting shows and was a part of films like Ready and Sultan, but it was Sacred Games that put her on the map in 2018. Her filmography now includes films like Gully Boy and Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare and two OTT shows – Voot’s Illegal and Amazon Prime’s Waqalat From Home. “When I moved to Mumbai, this is what I wanted to be doing and I hoped that I’d get here. It was that same hope that’s taken me this far. That I get to go west and rub shoulders with the likes of Jared Harris, Terrence Mann and Laura Birn is incredible. Every single actor contributes so much that you cannot help but become a better person. You cannot help but gain confidence in what you are doing.”Author of Parveen Babi: A Life, Karishma Upadhyay has been writing about movies and movie stars for almost two decades. On Twitter, she goes by @karishmau.