Interview David Baddiel
Simon O'Hare talks multiculturalism and religion with the multi-talented writer and comedian
Interview: David Baddiel
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Already a successful comedian, TV personality and author, David Baddiel has added yet another occupation to his CV: movie screenwriter. Baddiel wrote the script for comedy drama ‘The Infidel’, in which Omid Djalili plays a Muslim man called Mahmud who undergoes an identity crisis after making the shock discovery that he was adopted by his Muslim parents as a child – and was actually born a Jew.
Baddiel explains what prompted him to write the screenplay: “When I was young, a lot of people thought I was Indian. I actually got beaten up, once for being Jewish and once for being Pakistani, and then when I was on telly for the first time loads of people used to write in saying ‘you’re the funniest Indian comedian I’ve ever seen’, and I was always quite happy with that. So I always had around me a sense of people not quite knowing which ethnic box to put me in. And then when I saw Omid, who was the first comedian to really tackle race and religion as his main subject; not only was it interesting that he was doing that, but also I didn’t know, is he Muslim? He could be Jewish? And he turned out to be Baha’i, which is a religion which believes that all religions are part of the same book, which made him perfect [for the part] in a way.”
Given his Jewish background, did Baddiel feel extra pressure to be even-handed in his portrayal of the faiths? “It was a bit of a political dance,” he says. “To some extent there are probably more jokes about Jews than there are about Muslims in the movie, but that’s partly because I know what I’m talking about. But the actual emotional heft of the movie is with the Muslims. When it came out, at one point it was the top movie in Finchley and Bradford, and so therefore it did appeal to both communities, which is all I could hope for.”
I ask Baddiel whether he believes Britain is a multicultural success. He laughs – not the easiest question – before launching into an impressively articulate response. “I think that Britain has managed to be an incredibly tolerant country. I know this because my mother is a holocaust survivor – she fought in Nazi Germany and escaped, with three weeks to go before the war started, to come here. Things were not easy to be honest, but she managed to build a life for herself, and her parents managed to build lives for themselves. And there is a part of me that will be eternally grateful to this country for that. And for all the fact that there are racists in this country, we’ve never had anything that looks like a fascist government. We’ve never had real dangers, like there still are in Europe, and yet we’ve got more races in this country than most other places.”
He adds that he once visited Belgium for a literary festival, and even intellectual bohemians there were expressing concerns about immigration. “They would mean the… sort of… four black people in Antwerp,” Baddiel continues. “And I’d say ‘come to London, we’re fine with that’, you know. And I think that is a great thing about Britain. Even though there are problems, it’s basically working alright.”
What of Baddiel’s own religious beliefs? “I think I am 100% atheist. I mean, I’m Jewish, there’s no doubt I’m culturally Jewish, I think the tone of my comedy is pretty Jewish and the way I think is quite Jewish, and you know I’m neurotic and all that stuff, something of a hypochondriac and a depressive; I’m all those things because I’m Jewish. But I absolutely, totally, I don’t just believe this, I know there is no God. I know it like I know that stone is hard. And for that reason I’m not that bothered about it; I quite like religion. Dawkins and people like that… they seem to me to be shrill a little bit, because they’re not relaxed with their atheism. I am so confident that God doesn’t exist, I think religion’s quite sweet and nice and got poetry and magic in it. It’s fine, it’s just completely wrong.”
The Infidel is out to own on DVD from 9th August
Posted on Wednesday 4th August 2010
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