The last thing Pardeep Nagra wanted to do was disrupt a sport.
In 1999, he was at the top of his game. He had risen swiftly through the boxing ranks, winning the Ontario flyweight amateur boxing championship before shifting his sights to the national level. As he prepared to fight for his right to compete at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, his professional career came crashing down thanks to an obscure Canadian Amateur Boxing Association rule.
Having a beard was considered a safety hazard and against the rules. Nagra however was — and is — a member of the Sikh faith. His religion prohibits shaving any of his facial hair, so Nagra refused on those grounds. The CABA proceeded to ban him from the Olympic qualifying, derailing his career and setting up a high-profile court battle.
It’s that court battle that drew in Prem Singh, a fellow practicing Sikh, living in Canada at the time.
“I was watching TV and I heard Pardeep get interviewed,” Singh, the star of the upcoming film about Nagra’s life, Tiger, told Uproxx Sports. “He felt like, as part of his identity, he needed to change rules as a boxer. I found it very interesting.
“As someone struggling to get the roles I want versus the stereotypical roles of an Indian guy who’s a terrorist, or a taxi driver, or a convenience store owner, I wanted to do something different,” Singh continued. “That’s when I decided this was the story I wanted to do, this was the role I wanted to play.”
Singh doesn’t have a screenwriting background. Neither does Michael Pugliese, with whom he hit it off with while attending an acting class. Singh eventually mentioned his desire to share Nagra’s story one day, discussing the boxer-turned-activist’s career and Pugliese was instantly hooked.
The two immersed themselves in researching and developing the tools they needed to write the screenplay, and Pugliese and Singh reached out directly to Nagra after starting to develop the script in 2010. Despite the film following Nagra’s path through inequality, moments of all-too-real racism and what Singh called a “wall of fire,” the real-life boxer didn’t want to control the story Singh and Pugliese sought out to tell.
“Whatever drove these individuals to write a script about my life, I’m proud of them,” Nagra said. “They’re pursuing an artistic passion. My job is to support that. When I was approached with the script, I had no interest in working on it because I didn’t want to define the story. Prem and Mike are going to tell the story about what inspired them.”
The story is very much in the writer’s vision, with the only real difference according to Singh and Pugliese being that Nagra’s character is portrayed as an American instead of a Canadian as he fights in the boxing ring and in the courtroom.
“We wanted this to be on more of a universal scale, so that was the direction we wanted to go with him being an American,” Singh said. “The underlying tone was to humanize this character. Everything else that happened in the film is what happened other than him being Canadian.”
For Pugliese, who plays Nagra’s rival in the film, the timing couldn’t be more perfect for the release of this movie.
“I don’t know if Tiger would have worked 5-10 years ago,” Pugliese said. “It’s a really remarkable time in our country. We can speak and be vocal about our thoughts and our way of life. It’s the right time.”
Singh also believes his role as the lead in this film should help continue Hollywood’s recent transition into more diversified casting, saying “We hope that creating Tiger will open opportunities for others to create this type of content. Crazy Rich Asians did a great job of humanizing the Asian culture. I think we’re making progress at least into diversifying cultures into cinema.”
For Nagra, as he continues his battle against international boxing associations, he hopes Tiger inspires viewers to push for change against inequalities and to “step up” for what’s right.
“We’re not the first, I’m not the last,” Nagra said. “We had Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, Muhammad Ali, even Nelson Mandela, who was a boxer in his youthful days. Sports is not immune to these issues. You’ve seen this in the NFL, these issues get radicalized. When you step up, you’re speaking for others more than just yourself. Creating a voice and standing up is important. Not everyone always has an opportunity to do it.”
Tiger debuts in theaters across Canada and the United States on Nov. 30.
