Celebrity Life

The breakout star of the film Hand Rolled Cigarette, newcomer Bipin Karma is on a high. We talk to the rising young Hong Kong-based actor.

Bipin Karma carries the weight of great expectations on his shoulders well – the weight of 30,000 pairs of eyes from the underserved Nepali community in Hong Kong. And the 24-year-old knows it.

You may not remember exactly when the term “representation matters” first emerged into the common lexicon, but it’s been a go-to phrase in the past two years. Partly for that very reason, Karma knows Hong Kong’s Nepali diaspora has held him in great esteem from the moment he was cast as the second lead in the now-acclaimed film, Hand Rolled Cigarette.

Written and directed by Chan Kin-long, the modest budget two-hander with actor Gordon Lam not only reaped great rewards at the local box-office, but also amassed seven nominations – including Best Feature Film – at this year’s 57th Golden Horse Awards.

There are several questions hanging in the air. Will Karma win Best Newcomer in the upcoming round of local awards? Considering the glowing reviews, will he get the trophy for Best Supporting Actor? Is this the beginning of a career where he’s the focus of all eyes in the Southeast Asian community?

“Initially, all I saw was that the film was a great opportunity,” he says. “I wanted to be involved in it and I wanted to do as much as I could, to the best of my ability, finish it, execute it, but I wasn’t thinking so much about how much it means in the bigger scheme of things. “I just realised that I’m the first Nepali actor in Hong Kong – ever! So when I was asked during the press calls around the release of the film, ‘How does it feel?’ – well, the honest answer is that I don’t know how I feel. I’m still going through it.”

Born in Hong Kong, Karma was brought up by his grandmother in Nepal until he was eight years old. He attended primary school here – “I had to learn English real fast” – and eventually enrolled to study creative media at City University. He’s currently trying to wrap up his BSc in digital entertainment at the same institution. Which brings us to the obvious question. How did he get the part? “Audition,” he says. “I was in my final year at college when the movie’s director was in the thick of the casting process and he came across Bench, a digital short I’d written. Even doing that, we couldn’t find a lead actor who was of ethnic minority descent, so I ended up doing the part out of necessity. No one else was doing it.

“I went for the casting, but I was kind of reluctant at first, because it was big part and you had to speak fluent Cantonese – and my Cantonese was elementary. And it’s a demanding role. How it all came about, you can only connect the dots looking back. I couldn’t even comprehend I’d be acting as a lead in a Cantonese film – it had never felt as if there was any place here for someone like me.”

With a surname like Karma, maybe it was fate. He laughs and says, “I was comfortable in front of the camera – I was doing parkour videos, I was doing commercials for different brands. But I hadn’t done any proper acting to that extent – I was doing stunts and acrobatics, but it wasn’t often speaking parts.”

Having little experience or fluency, as well as an innate shyness, he wondered how he’d managed to land a leading role in a major motion picture. “I asked the director, ‘Why did you choose me?’ He said, ‘Intuition.’ Everything came together, because I was interested in cinema and I wanted to work on a film, but behind the camera.

It had never felt as if there was any place for someone like me

Bipin Karma

“I was fully aware this was my big break into the film industry. We had long chats at the early stages of presenting my background with sincerity and authenticity. I wasn’t going to be projected as a cliché or in some stereotypical manner. The writer and director’s intentions were good, and we wanted it to appear as real as possible. So far, it’s been amazing.”

The Hong Kong film industry is also notoriously hard-working, with long hours and toil both physical and emotional, but Karma looks back on the experience only with fondness. “Working on the film felt like a dream. The shoot took around a month, and we’d had a few months’ preparation before shooting. As it’s my voice on screen, I had to do a lot of practice in advance. The team helped me translate the Chinese script into English. I had to understand it, get it right phonetically and, you know – act!”

Then, of course, there was the physicality of the part, which also took its toll. “When you see the action scenes, I was in the zone. In my head I knew how to perfectly execute it, even though I’d had surgery just seven months before on my ankle [for a gymnastics injury]. I hadn’t fully recovered and there were some moments when I was really hurting, but I used that as a tool on screen – the body language, the pain all worked in my favour.”

When the film was released and resonated with audiences, few people were more surprised than Karma’s own family. He’d briefly mentioned to them that he was working on a film project and didn’t self-hype to his friends and crew, letting the work speak for himself.

“I really appreciate the recognition,” he says, “but honestly I’m quite an introvert. They saw the full film and were – I guess – surprised.” Karma admits to being the quiet type. “I like my alone time – I get a lot of my energy in solitude,” he says. So when the time came to promote the film, he had to take a deep breath and get used to the rigamarole of questions, the media calls and photo sessions. At our photoshoot we saw him come alive, doing somersaults, high kicks and leaps towards the ceiling.

“We usually do the safe shots and then I vibe with the photographer and ask, ‘Hey, can I jump?’ Speaking in a foreign language was generally a challenge as a kid, so when I returned to Hong Kong, I naturally expressed myself through sport. Parkour has been the biggest impact in my life – my action is louder than my words.”

As with any actor, it’s not the past laurels but what comes next that matters most – and especially so at this stage. He’s currently keeping his studies in mind and is working on a personal project that involves writing and directing.

Back in Nepal, his face is cropping up in many fan sites. “There are great actors in Nepal, wanting to go global, but it’s not easy. For me to get this opportunity, it was a slow dawning, ‘Oh my God!’ It means a lot. So many Nepalese have been so supportive. A lot of media from Nepal contacted me, and so many of my community’s friends, families near and distant, they’ve just been reaching out and saying they’re proud and – it means a lot.”

A people that’s long felt excluded can at last see a version of itself on the screen, thanks to Karma’s work. Those who’ve never seen one of their own as a leading figure in Asian cinema find this young man representing a long-existing ethnicity but one that’s mostly been invisible – or at least not so glamorously visible. I ask the question, “How does it feel?” several times before he answers. “How do I feel? Happy,” says Karma. “Yeah, I guess, I’m just happy.

(Hero image: Bipin Karma in Zegna)

Bipin Karma Photoshoot

PHOTOGRAPHER ANDY CHAN
STYLIST BHISAN RAI
ART DIRECTION P.RAMAKRISHNAN
MAKE-UP ARTIST JENNY TZIONG
HAIR STYLIST DOMINIC TAO

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