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We chat to Sanjeev Kohli about his iconic Still Game character Navid in Glasgow’s The Drake
National World - LocalTV
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18/03/2025
We sit down with Scottish comic actor Sanjeev Kohli to talk about the making of his iconic Still Game character Navid.
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Transcript
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00:00
Still Game was really my big breakout acting job.
00:02
That was the first time I'd acted with any of them.
00:04
I didn't know the impact the show was going to make.
00:06
I certainly didn't know the impact the video was going to make.
00:08
What I did know was, was that it was a joy to play him.
00:11
I call it the Glasgow Asian accent.
00:13
That pure Governor Hill, Bollocks Shields thing, right?
00:15
Because I knew guys at college, right?
00:16
Taught like that, right?
00:18
Pure Glasgow, also pure Asian.
00:20
They are no pals with hockey sticks.
00:21
They'll break your legs, yeah?
00:23
And I would listen to this.
00:23
And I grew up in Bishop Briggs, very vanilla neighbourhood.
00:26
So I went to Langside College for a year.
00:28
I'd pure listen to these vaidos talking like this.
00:30
Going up the Vicky Road, causing trouble, going to kebabish.
00:33
These are chippings and pickles, yeah?
00:35
And I was like, I'm loving this.
00:36
And I knew I could do it.
00:38
And then I thought, right, OK, with Naveed,
00:41
I want to play him like my dad.
00:42
He was in his mid-thirties before he came to Glasgow.
00:44
So he never picked up the twang.
00:46
So my dad would speak like this, you know?
00:48
Eat that you cheeky bugger.
00:50
Check the pressure in your tyres.
00:51
Check the pressure in your boiler.
00:52
Just check all the pressure everywhere.
00:54
Talked like this.
00:55
So I just knew if I just gave it that wee tenor tortoise quality,
00:57
I could just go leave early.
00:59
I could just take my dad's voice and ouija up a wee bit.
01:02
And I knew he had the voice.
01:03
And then for the physicality of Naveed, my dad,
01:05
if you put a turban on Naveed, that's my dad.
01:08
So I found it very comforting to play him.
01:11
And there I see it quite easy to make the transition.
01:14
And what I loved about it was I could
01:16
bring all my kind of Asian experience,
01:18
all my Glasgow experience, and it comes to a beautiful point
01:21
in Naveed, you know?
01:22
And also my dad's incredibly sarcastic, which was handy.
01:26
Because Naveed also is.
01:27
Again, what I loved about the Naveed character was
01:29
Ford and Gregg created Naveed, wrote all the words.
01:32
They're geniuses.
01:33
But also they had the foresight to write an Asian character
01:36
of such prominence.
01:37
I would have been worried myself.
01:39
But what I loved about Naveed was that he was nobody's victim.
01:43
He was the richest guy in Craig Lang.
01:45
He was the one driving the tan Merc with the private number plate,
01:48
which you never actually saw.
01:49
But he was clearly the king of Craig Lang
01:51
because he was the richest guy.
01:52
And that is a dynamic that you see all across.
01:57
I was going to say Scotland, but all across the UK
01:59
is a lot of convenience stores, corner shops.
02:04
Asian families work their absolute bahooki off
02:07
and make the money.
02:08
And they're in quite kicked in areas,
02:09
but they do really, really well.
02:11
So I was sort of channeling that.
02:14
But also just because once you put the fake,
02:16
and it is a fake belly that we put on Naveed,
02:18
so what you have is this kind of adult baby grow thing
02:21
with a pillow down the duke.
02:23
And suddenly you're like that.
02:25
And suddenly you're like, this is arrogance.
02:28
It's just your stance.
02:30
Because I've got quite poor posture.
02:31
I'm quite slouchy.
02:32
But once that goes in, suddenly you're like that.
02:35
I run this place.
02:36
I run this place.
02:37
And you channel that as well.
02:39
The physicality is quite useful for that.
02:42
But you just always have in your mind
02:43
that you're the guy, you're the richest guy.
02:45
It's quite funny because I think one of the first times
02:48
Naveed comes out of the shop was the episode
02:52
where his brothers died and he has to go to the funeral in India.
02:55
So he goes to Jack and Victor's to ask them to run the shop.
02:59
And Michael Hines, the director, said,
03:01
you know, when you go to that close,
03:04
walk around like you own the place.
03:06
So I do.
03:07
I totally like, I'm like that, flicking things, you know.
03:10
Picking up the thing, what's this for?
03:12
You're in someone's space and you're totally like, yeah.
03:15
It's like, imagine King Charles came to your house.
03:17
You'd be like, get the tea on.
03:19
Come on, where's the biscuits?
03:21
So that was kind of the dynamic with Naveed.
03:23
He was definitely kind of, there was an arrogance there
03:25
because he knew that he was the richest guy there.
03:27
And he's channeled that, really.
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