When Robert Santiago first walked into an audition, he wasn’t looking for an acting career. More than 30 years after migrating from Pune to Australia, he was working in the steel industry and had taken his children to audition for a film role. While waiting in reception, he was asked a simple question.
“Why don’t you audition as well?”
The director, Tony Rogers, asked him to say a sentence in English. Santiago can’t even remember what he said.
“He said, ‘I like you. I’ll take you into the movie.'”
That chance encounter eventually led to one of Australia’s most successful online comedy series and now a feature film.
How to Talk Australians: The Movie, to be released nationally on June 11, is based on the hit web series of the same name, which attracted more than 12 million views online. The film follows a group of Indian call centre workers whose dream Australian holiday quickly goes off track when they find themselves stranded in regional Australia instead of visiting iconic destinations such as Sydney, Melbourne and Uluru.
For Santiago, who reprises his role as the well-meaning professor leading the tour group, the film taps into experiences familiar to many migrants.
“When I first came to Australia, it was a big culture change,” he says.
One of his earliest memories involved standing on a railway platform when an Australian passer-by cheerfully asked, “How are you going?”
“I thought, what a silly question,” Santiago laughs. “Obviously, I was going by train.”
Only later did he realise the stranger was simply asking how he was.
Those kinds of cultural misunderstandings sit at the heart of How to Talk Australians, which is
Co-star Ria Patel understands that balancing act from a different perspective. Born in India but brought to Australia as a toddler, Patel grew up navigating two worlds.
“I felt like I wasn’t Australian enough or Indian enough,” she says. “Now I fully embrace both. I love my Tim Tams and Vegemite, but I also love my dal chawal.”
She believes the film captures the confusion, humour and occasional awkwardness that comes with trying to understand another culture.
“I feel like I can understand both sides. The Australians and the Indians trying to navigate each other.”
Patel plays one of the students on the ill-fated tour, a bright and optimistic young woman who arrives expecting Australia’s postcard attractions but instead finds herself stuck in Dubbo and other regional towns.
“She’s very disappointed,” Patel says with a laugh. “She starts off very positive and hopeful, but then there’s a lot of anger because things keep going wrong.”
The film’s regional setting proved to be one of its unexpected strengths.
While filming in the Victorian town of Nhill, Patel discovered that multicultural Australia extends well beyond the major cities.
As a vegetarian, she went searching for Indian food and found an Indian restaurant operating from a petrol station.
“The owner was from Gujarat, the same part of India as me,” she says. “We ended up speaking Gujarati. It was a lovely reminder that there are Indians everywhere in Australia.”
For Santiago, one of the film’s greatest strengths is that it allows Australians to laugh at themselves. “When Australians watch this movie, they see their own lifestyle and culture reflected back at them,” he says. “They laugh because it’s true.”
The film reunites the team behind the hit web series and features a supporting cast that includes Shane Jacobson, Danielle Walker, Dave Lawson and Rick Davies.
The humour ranges from broad comedy to distinctly Australian jokes and slang. Along the way, audiences encounter expressions such as “chucking a wobbly”, “drongo” and “dipstick”, while watching the bewildered visitors attempt to decode Australian culture.
But beneath the laughs lies a broader message about understanding. In an increasingly multicultural Australia, Patel hopes audiences leave with a little more patience for one another.
“Sometimes we’re very quick to make assumptions or judge people,” she says. “Sometimes it’s as simple as saying, ‘Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean.'”
And if audiences leave with nothing more than a good laugh, she says that’s perfectly fine too. After all, comedy was always the point.
As cost-of-living pressures continue to bite and life feels increasingly stressful, Santiago believes the film offers a welcome escape.
“If you want 100 minutes of entertainment and laughter, come and watch this movie,” he says. “This is a unique comedy. You won’t see anything quite like it.”
How to Talk Australians: The Movie is in cinemas nationally from 11 June
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