Its the ultimate underdog story about an underdog story.
Those hardly ever existed.
In Britain, things had really been shifting and changing.
Credit: Christine Parry/Fox Searchlight
For many years, football was very much about hooligans and sort of right-wing people.
Anything to do with football was a no-go area if you were a person of color.
CHADHA:I pretty much knew when I was writing it that I wanted to cast Parminder.
Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley in ‘Bend It Like Beckham.'.Christine Parry/Fox Searchlight
When I met her, she said, Oh, yeah, I know how to play football.
Of course, she didnt.
[Laughs] But it was fine.
Parminder Nagra in ‘Bend It Like Beckham’.Christine Parry/Fox Searchlight
NAGRA:We ended up [training] at the local park, Clapham Common.
It was me and Keira, and it was a trainer.
We had to get changed at the local pub down the street.
Christine Parry/Fox Searchlight
CHADHA:We had a few scary moments.
[Laughs] There was a little bit of smirking going around, but we became very friendly.
At that point, David Beckham was like nobody.
In soccer, people knew him.
Originally, the other writer Guljit, who was into soccer, she had been all over Ryan Giggs.
But it could have easily been Ryan Giggs!
But shortly before the films U.K. premiere and the World Cup Beckham broke his foot.
David Beckham is not going to make it to your premiere, you must be devastated!
Everywhere youd go, people were talking about the film.
It was only the second film Id done, so I thought every film does as well.
We could never have paid for that.
Although when I went to America, nobody knew who David Beckham was.
I was doing press, and a journalist said to me, Who is David Beckman?
But the film didnt lead to more diverse, female-fronted films, as its creators had hoped.
Its a miracle the film even got made.
I dont think it would ever get made today.
It was just hurtful, like, Wow, okay.
And I dont feel it has.
Having said that, I feel that things are slowly changing, with diversity being talked about so much.
It was traumatized, and culturally it was in a really weird place.
NAGRA:I think people love a story about an underdog.Billy Elliotdid it.Rocky.
