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Machel Montano stars in film ‘Scandalous’

A businessman is saddled with backbreaking debt and his beautiful, world-travelled daughter who adores him will do anything to see him happy. She is about to be married to a wealthy businessman in an effort to rescue her father financially and on the day of the wedding she meets and falls in love with a soca artiste. From that moment the scandal begins.

That is the basic synopsis of the movie, Scandalous starring Machel Montano alongside British actress Natalie Perera and Indian actor Kabir Bedi.

Work on the film begins on Monday with the cast and crew scheduled to shoot for a total of 25 days with one week of that being spent in Tobago. The producers on Wednesday held at the Hilton Trinidad a news conference to reveal details on the project.

Montano said it took them nine years to get to this point and during that period there were moments when he felt like giving up on the movie.

Securing the finances was the major challenges and Montano said that he can’t for the life of him understand why getting the money to produce the movie was so challenging. Scandalous, Montano said tells the story of Trinidad and Tobago and explores the taboo that is interracial (Afro/Indo) relationships.

The winner of the Best International Performance Award at the recent 2014 Soul Train Awards got to the Hilton shortly after arriving on the island from Los Angeles, only stopping off at home to freshen up. He said the coming weeks working on the movie will be quite an interesting experience in light of the hectic Christmas and Carnival seasons, which includes his preparations for his mega Machel Monday concert event.

The reigning International Power Soca Monarch and National Road March Monarch said that he is ready for the challenge and is also already having a lot of fun working on the movie. He is also doing the soundtrack, which will include revamped versions of songs such as, “Real Unity”, “No War” and “Hard Wuk” among others. He has also been working with Perera who will be doing some singing in the movie, helping her to get the songs right and to also get the Trini pronunciations down correctly.

Montano spoke about his own personal journey having turned 40 years old and coming to the place where he believes that he finally understands his purpose in life. He said that he is here to help people of Trinbago and the world at large to, “Remember”. He said through his music and other gifts he is destined to help mankind see that we are all one and should seek to live in unity and love. Montano said we have all come from one organism and therefore all feel and seek after love, joy, peace and to be united.

Perera was at the news conference and said she had been dreaming all her life to be an artiste and have the opportunity to act in a musical. She said Montano is a musical genius and also a warm and wonderful person who has been teaching her a lot. Asked about being a British actress portraying the role of a Trinidadian, how would she deal with the accent and dialogue, Perera said she has already embodied her character and is working on getting the role just right.

In truth, Perera already sounds like a Trinidadian, one who has seen the world and developed that unique way some of us speak. She was very friendly with the members of the media and other people at the conference, seeming to have already settled in nicely on the island. Perera will portray the role of Anita Panchouri, while Montano’s character is named, Lee De Leon. Bedi portrays Anita’s father. The cast and crew will also feature a number of local actors and technical service providers.

Perera is a classically trained actress, graduate of Royal Central Drama College. She has portrayed roles from Shakespeare’s Cleopatra to contemporary characters in productions such as Mukul Ahmed’s A Golden Age and experimental work like Epidemic at the Southwark Playhouse.

Perera made her feature film debut as Sandana in 2014’s Der Koch directed by Ralf Huettner whose 2010 sleeper hit Vincent Wants To Sea won the best picture award at the 61st German Film awards. The fresh faced, multi-talented singer and musician—she plays piano and saxaphone was cast in the role after an international search directed by casting director Kelly Valentine Hendry, who did casting for Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire.

Scandalous is being directed by Todd Kessler, an American film and television writer, producer and director. Among his credits are director and producer of the feature film Keith and show runner and co-creator of Nickelodeon’s preschool series Blue’s Clues. The writer of the screenplay is Claire Ince, a New York-based Bajan writer and MFA graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Ince’s work has screened at international festivals and her screenplays and teleplays have been finalists in contests ranging from the Organization of Black Screenwriters Screenwriting Contest to Austin Film Festival, Kaos Films and the Indian Film Festival of LA. In 2008 Ince’s screenplay Scandalous! won the Bahamas International Film Festival Screenwriting contest. Her screenplay for the Caribbean-set romantic comedy Once Upon This Aisle, set to star Malinda Williams and Vanessa Williams is slated for production this year.

Serving as one of the producers is Ancil McKain who is a Tobago-born film and television editor whose credits include IFC’s hit reality series Film School, the feature film Evergreen, which premiered at Sundance and Jesse Moss’s AMC Special, Rated R: Republicans In Hollywood. He is currently producing the romantic comedy Once Upon This Aisle.

Steve Brown is another producer of the movie and he has worked on a string of critically acclaimed independent films, including two projects for actor/director Robert Duvall, The Apostle, which won many national and international awards, including three Spirit awards and an Academy award nomination, and Assassination Tango. Browns’ past films include highly successful studio and independent pictures such as Wild Things, Grosse Pointe Blank, Dazed And Confused, Big Momma’s House, Down With Love and Double Impact.