Four Lions

First published on 16 Aug 2010. Updated on 13 Oct 2010.

Ahead of its Sydney premiere, we caught up with Kayvan Novak, one of the stars of Chris Morris's controversial comedy about four hapless jihadis.

Welcome to Sydney. Have you been seeing the sights? We took a boat to Watsons Bay. We went on a walk past the male nudist beach, to the lighthouse and back again.  

Interesting choice. Were there any male nudists there? Oh, there were – there was a congregation on one side of five nude males. I think they had been camping. Not like that. Actually, yes – like that. But they also had a tent.
 
In other news, how did you get involved with Four Lions? The usual. Agent: "Do you want to meet [co-writer/director] Chris Morris? He's doing a film about suicide bombers." "Yes please!" Met him in a café, had a chat, he gave me some DVDs of Asian lads from the north of England and said: "Look at this guy in particular. Give me the accent." I gave him an accent. He was like, "Try harder." I got the part over the course of a year.

When you first read the Four Lions script and realised it was a comedy about jihadi suicide bombers, what did you think? I thought: "I've got so many lines. Wicked! This is awesome." No, I did think seriously about it. I don't think I would have done it with anyone else apart from Chris. It's really about trusting him and trusting that he knew what he was doing. And he did.

Did you worry about how certain people might react if they thought you were mocking Islamic fundamentalists? Did you think you might have had to go into hiding? Yeah, there was a lot of that at the beginning where people would initially go: "Hmm: suicide bombers. Comedy. What's funny about that?" It's a film ultimately. It's trying to break that fear factor down really, by extracting humour from a potentially humourless subject.

The film will surprise a few people with just how far it pushes the envelope... That's the beauty of the film – it kind of tickles you and then kicks you in the balls at a certain point. And then kicks you again, harder. That reaction is quite common, where people find it really funny, but also really moving.

Several times the film makes you laugh out loud, but then a couple of seconds later you get laugher's remorse where you suddenly realise what you're laughing at. Presumably that kind of discomfort is entirely deliberate? Yeah, not many films take you there. That's the skill of Chris really. Dan Rookwood