From moving from the US to securing a place for himself in the Indian entertainment industry, actor-musician Alexx O’Nell has come a long way. In his 15-year journey, Alexx has acted in films and shows in Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. In a freewheeling conversation, Alexx opened up about his role in the Prime Video film Ae Watan Mere Watan starring Sara Ali Khan, his latest song Pride and his stint in Bengali films.

You play a British officer in Ae Watan Mere Watan…

Alexx O’Nell: John Lyre is his name. Now, here’s what I love about this character. He is an amalgamation of the cunningness, brutality and intelligence of the British Empire. He’s a fictional character that director Kannan Iyer and writer Darab Farooqui created to take the place of all of the various people that Usha ( Sara Ali Khan) would have been kind of hiding from and rebelling against.

I love that Kannan and Darab have not tried to make him ultra-realistic. He’s a very terrifying creature. And I say creature because, at some point, you’re going to ask, is he in the police? No. The police work for him. Is he in the military? Not really. The military feeds him information. So, he’s this creature that exists outside of all of this, and that makes him scarier because he’s not confined by the police or military protocol.

He’s able to torture and kill as much as he wants. He’s smart. He’s fluent in Hindi. He’s well-versed in the latest technology of 1942 which is being developed in the European theatre of World War II, where the allies are working with new types of radar and detection methods, which he employs to track down Congress radio. So, he’s the embodiment of the entire force of the British Empire.

How much do production, costume and make-up design help your performance while doing a period film like this?

Alexx O’Nell: All of it helps. John Lyer exists mostly at night. Being always in the dark also lent itself to my performance. He’s dressed in black and he’s always in the shadows, searching. We were able to shoot in these beautifully preserved colonial buildings in South Mumbai and colonial bungalows in Bandra. We even shot in some of these colleges that were established in the colonial era in South Mumbai.

If you were to have come on the set and sat in the streetcar created for the film, or if you were to sit in the 1940-era jeeps, or if you were to have been in the offices that we utilised in the colleges, you would have felt like you’re in 1942. And I think that goes a long way to helping us as actors.

Any anecdotes from shooting the face-off scenes with Sara Ali Khan’s character in the film?

Alexx O’Nell: I had been told that Sara has a very bubbly personality and that she cracks jokes a lot. But I don’t think this was the film for that. So, there wasn’t wisecracking, or a whole lot of joke-cracking because we were all under this heavy weight of responsibility to tell this extremely important story. But yeah, there were many moments in the making of this film that are going to stick in my mind.

One is where Sara insisted that I slap her across the face. She wanted to properly portray that reaction. But in another scene, you’ll see my foot is on her head. And that terrified me. I may play some negative characters in life but I’m not that bad! To be putting my foot on Sara’s head and pushing her head onto the ground was a terrifying moment for me.

So, I changed that. I end up caressing her head with my foot, which is a very weird thing to do because it shows my character’s dominance but it’s not being aggressively violent in that particular action. I’m using my foot to move her hair away so that she’s more comfortable while I’m torturing her. I was being as delicate as I could be because I didn’t want to hurt her. At the same time, she wanted to give the most authentic possible reaction. And I respect that. I think we struck a good balance in those moments.

You’ll be shooting in West Bengal for your next Bengali movie. What is it about?

Alexx O’Nell: It’s a film called Devi Chaudhurani. It’s the second time that Prosenjit Chatterjee and I will be working together, after Yeti Obhijaan (2017) which was my Bengali debut. It’s a very interesting story and I’ll be in West Bengal shooting for it for a little while.

You have shot quite a lot in West Bengal for your Hindi and Bengali films.

Alexx O’Nell: Yes. Although my first Bengali film was Srijit Mukherji’s Yeti Obhijaan, I had already shot some Hindi films in West Bengal. I shot Chittagong with Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Rajkummar Rao, which was beautiful. I also shot Bose: Dead or Alive (ALT Balaji) again with Rajkummar in Kolkata.

I’ve also shot Ek Je Chhilo Raja (2018) and then more recently, a series called Rekha (Hoichoi), which was with Azmeri Haque Badhon who featured with me in Khufiya (Netflix) as well. I shot a film called Golondaaj with Dev and Ishaa Saha. I was nominated for best actor in a negative role for it. I lost. But to me, that only means that I was the second-best actor. And that feels good.

My next release in West Bengal is Pokkhirajer Dim, which is a beautiful film, a very different fantasy. It’s totally weird and I love it. I’ll be reuniting with Anirban Bhattacharya after Golondaaj for this film. I’m excited to be back working on projects in West Bengal.

You did theatre back in the US for many years. Why did you decide to move to India to pursue a career in acting?

Alex O’Nell: It wasn’t a decision, to be honest. I was an actor on stage in the US. I did modelling and I was a terrible model. I had nightmares of falling off the ramp and colliding with celebrities and just making a huge embarrassment. But I got cast in some ads in India. Ad filmmakers here also make films. So, R. Balki put me in Cheeni Kum (2007). After that, I did Loins of Punjab Presents (2007), and both of those films did pretty well.

Then I did Nach Baliye (2007), which gave me pan-India exposure. I started working in the south. I did Madrasapattinam, which was Amy Jackson’s first film. I did Urumi with Santosh Sivan, which had Genelia D’Souza, Prabhu Deva and Prithviraj Sukumaran. And then Yeti Obhijaan introduced me to West Bengal. It’s kind of snowballed.

I’ve been able to continue to grow my career based on the recommendations of the people I’ve worked with. I mean, the casting director for Ae Watan Mere Watan, Gautam Kishanchandani, was also the casting director for Khufiya. It’s very hard to say, oh, I’m going to go hit the pavements in New York or LA and start from scratch when I have these beautiful projects in India.

I’m shooting Lucifer 2: Empuraan with Mohanlal. The Brave Child is finished and ready to release. I’m shooting Shankara with Akshay Kumar. Hopefully, this will do better than our first collaboration, Joker (2012). Pokkhirajer Dim is ready for release. Bak Bak is a series with Divya Dutta that is coming out on Amazon. I did Ananth Mahadevan’s Phule, starring Pratik Gandhi and Patralekha. It’s difficult for me to put all of that and my music aside. India is where I want to be. And thankfully, India has accepted me in that way.

You also released your latest music video Pride recently…

Alexx O’Nell: Yes. I have people come up to me and say, ‘I listened to Pride. I love the message.’ I ask them, ‘What is the message?’ And they describe something to me that was not in my mind while I was writing the song. The same thing happened with my other song Still On My Mind (with Shama Sikander). Music comes to mean different things to different people because of the experiences from which they are approaching that particular song.

Pride is doing very well in South Africa and so is These Four Walls. I migrated my music career to South Africa because India doesn’t have much of a place for independent music, music that doesn’t appear in films. I hope that will change someday. But until it does, I’m happy to have my music playing on the radio every day in South Africa and Europe.

However, my music is available on all Indian streaming platforms. It’s very important to me that my music also be where my films are; it’s a very important part of my personality. I feel like my music is much more personal to me than my films are.

The lyrics of your songs have a sense of heartbreak and longing…

Alexx O’Nell: When we’re happy we celebrate. What do we do when we’re unhappy? Unless someone gets us out of that mindset, generally we want to be alone. We dwell on those things and emotions. When I’m writing music for better or for worse, it’s because I’m dwelling on a very, very intense emotion. Generally, I tend to write music when I’m pensive, regretful, missing someone or lost someone, so all my music ends up coming out in that space. I love the fact that James Blunt or John Mayer can write happy songs. I don’t know how they do that.

I feel that the songs about heartbreak motivate you to try to work through those emotions. You sit down in an emotion that is very dark, negative and sad. And from that, you create something that you love. So, maybe it’s my therapy, maybe it’s my catharsis.