The power of saying no: The one movie that “completely overwhelmed” Dev Patel
It’s been nearly two decades since Dev Patel scored his breakthrough role in hard-hitting teen drama Skins. Still, despite evolving into a mainstream star and an in-demand performer, he’s got no intention of ever repeating the biggest misstep of his career.
As far as feature film debuts go, playing the lead role in the winner of eight Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ is an impressive way to go about it. However, trying to capitalise on the momentum generated by Slumdog Millionaire was key to establishing any sense of longevity the actor wished to attain.
Anchoring such a commercially successful and critically acclaimed picture caused the offers to start flooding in. Unfortunately, this led Patel to make a colossal miscalculation when he decided M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender was the perfect vehicle to make only his second big screen outing.
Things did not go well for the ridiculed adaptation, which was deservedly lambasted as one of the 21st century’s worst effects-heavy blockbusters. However, Patel does at least deserve credit for trying his best. After all, the film itself is irredeemably terrible, but his unintentionally hilarious and delightfully solemn intonation of “Bring me your elderly” is one for the history books.
Since then, he’s sworn a vow to himself to never again be tempted by the arena of blockbuster franchises, guns he’s been sticking to for almost 15 years at this point. Underselling it quite dramatically, Patel referred to The Last Airbender as “a film that was not received well at all” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Admitting he was “completely overwhelmed by the experience,” the star recalled how it was “really scary for me,” although it did teach him a valuable lesson in the long run. “That’s really when I learned the power of no, the idea of saying no,” he outlined, and ever since then, he’s never been in any great rush to sign on the dotted line just because the project in question will raise his profile or increase his bank balance.
The Last Airbender ended up winning Golden Raspberry Awards for ‘Worst Picture’ and ‘Worst Director’ to give Patel the complete opposite of his Slumdog Millionaire experience. The after-effects proved so detrimental to director Shyamalan’s own standing within Hollywood that he was forced to rehabilitate himself by returning to his roots with smaller, more atmospheric, and vastly less expensive thrillers.
Given that he’s an Oscar, Golden Globe, and Primetime Emmy-nominated performer, as well as a Bafta winner, it stands to reason that at least a handful of blockbuster offers have made their way to his agent in the intervening years, all of which have been swiftly rejected. Patel is now playing the Hollywood game the way he wants to, and based on the body of work he’s steadily been accumulating, the lack of a huge payday for another CGI-laden extravaganza hasn’t exactly held him back from realising his potential.
