The 2017 Awards season’s cutest actor, Sunny Pawar, has charmed yet another star. In a bit from the January 19 episode of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, host Stephen Colbert, 52, gets starstruck when he runs into the 8-year-old star of the Oscar-nominated film Lion in a park.
“Oh my god, I loved your performance in Lion,” Colbert says of the Mumbai native’s turn as a young Saroo Brierley — an Indian man who got separated from his family as a young boy, then found his way back to them as an adult, with the help of Google Earth. “It was so heartwarming. I would love to have you on my show sometime.”
The grade-schooler replies that he’d “love to,” but then Colbert recalls that Pawar doesn’t speak English. The actor — who bested more than 2,000 kids for the role — only speaks Hindi and uses a translator for interviews.
To nail his part, Pawar, who’s said he loves “signing autographs and taking pictures,” relied on a lot of memorization.
“I used to phonetically write the lines down — hear them and write them down,” explains Pawar, who was originally denied a Visa request to attend the award-winning film’s premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September. (He was later granted permission to enter the United States, appearing on stage with costar Dev Patel to introduce the movie at the Golden Globes January 8.) And to capture the proper emotion for a scene, says Pawar, “me and Garth Davis, the director, developed a sign language.”
To see how Pawar’s exchange with Colbert plays out, watch the video above!
