Show notes
Director Lena Khan talks with Mike about Best of the Best (2026), her Bollywood-fusion dance comedy for Netflix from writers Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam. Khan traces her path from UCLA activism and music videos to her debut The Tiger Hunter, and how Minhaj and Venkataramanujam brought her on after asking for script notes and liking what she said.
They dig into the rewrite process, Khan's push for tonal consistency across the film's teen-comedy, dance-movie, and female-friendship strands, and her call to trade a boy-subplot for a betrayal that lands harder. Khan talks choreographers Phillip Chbeeb and Mackenzie Dustman, cinematographer Adam Carbone, shooting dance numbers in a single day versus Bollywood's usual five or six, and calibrating the "15% Bollywood" spectacle without tipping into Glee. She also talks working with Rizwan Manji, mining her own friendships to crack a character, and what's next with her project Baby.
Best of the Best is now streaming on Netflix.
They dig into the rewrite process, Khan's push for tonal consistency across the film's teen-comedy, dance-movie, and female-friendship strands, and her call to trade a boy-subplot for a betrayal that lands harder. Khan talks choreographers Phillip Chbeeb and Mackenzie Dustman, cinematographer Adam Carbone, shooting dance numbers in a single day versus Bollywood's usual five or six, and calibrating the "15% Bollywood" spectacle without tipping into Glee. She also talks working with Rizwan Manji, mining her own friendships to crack a character, and what's next with her project Baby.
Best of the Best is now streaming on Netflix.
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