Zohran Mamdani has etched his name in history books as he was elected the 111th mayor of New York on Tuesday. He’ll also be New York’s first Muslim mayor and first person of South Asian descent to lead the city in its 400-year history. He is the Ugandan-born son of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani, a Columbia University professor and scholar of colonialism.

Mira is a well-known name in India and the world, having delivered acclaimed films such as The Namesake, Salaam Bombay and Monsoon Wedding. But did you know that at a crucial juncture in her career, it was a young Zohran that helped her out?

Harry Potter 4 or The Namesake?

During the 2018 edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Mira spoke to the audience about how she was also offered the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire film by Warner Brothers. This raised a new dilemma for her as she was already working on The Namesake.

“I also turned down Harry Potter. They saw Vanity Fair and they saw how vibrant and whatever voluptuous and successful for them, this was Warner Brothers and they thought well they’d had a big success with Alfonso Cuaron from Mexico making Harry Potter 3 so why not get the third-world rainbow coalition making Harry Potter 4,” she said.

“I was deep into making The Namesake at that time from a beautiful novel by Jhumpa Lahiri. I had suffered my very first death in my family, my mother-in-law, who was like a mother to me, and an unexpected death due to medical malpractice, and it completely blew me away. I was deep in that melancholy, and that’s what inspired me to make The Namesake because Jhumpa has written in it of this terrible melancholy of losing a parent in a foreign country, which is exactly what I was experiencing. So I was deep in the throes of like almost a month away from shooting The Namesake, and they offered me Harry Potter, and I thought I had to take these meetings because my son had learned to read from Harry Potter.”

She wondered whether ‘to give up my own film’ when Zohran helped her out. She said, “I asked my 14 year old son what should I do and he said to me, ‘mama many good directors can make Harry Potter but only you can make The Namesake’ and and it was such a liberating and clarifying statement.”

The Namesake released in 2006 and starred the late Irrfan Khan with Tabu and Kal Penn. It is considered among Mira’s best films.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire released in 2005 and was directed by Mike Newell of Four Weddings and a Funeral.

About Zohran Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on Tuesday, capping a stunning ascent for the 33-year-old, far-left state lawmaker, who promised to transform the government to restore power to the working class and fight back against a hostile Trump administration. In a victory for the Democratic Party’s progressive wing, Mamdani defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

Mamdani moved to New York at age 7, attended Bronx High School of Science and Bowdoin College in Maine, and tried his hand at multiple careers, including as a rap artist, working on his mother’s films, and as a foreclosure-prevention counselor at a nonprofit named Chhaya before turning toward politics.