Manisha Koirala to Lead Hollywood Indie ‘Cowgirls & Indians’
Introduction
Manisha Koirala’s next international project will take her to Texas, where she is set to play an Indian woman rebuilding her sense of identity far from home.
The veteran actor has joined Cowgirls & Indians, an independent feature from writer-director Tejal Desai. Kirtana Banskota is producing the film, which is scheduled to shoot in and around Austin in November.
At the centre of the story is Asha, a middle-aged Indian woman whose life in the American Southwest brings new friendships and an unexpected process of self-discovery. The filmmakers are approaching her journey as a coming-of-age story, only with a protagonist at a stage of life rarely associated with the genre.
For Koirala, who recently drew renewed attention for her performance as Mallikajaan in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, the role also connects with a subject she has spoken about before: the limited number of substantial characters written for older women.
From ‘Cowboys and Hindus’ to a Feature Film
Cowgirls & Indians has its roots in Desai’s award-winning short film Cowboys and Hindus. The feature was earlier developed under the title Cowboys & Indians before taking its current name.
The expanded story follows Asha as she negotiates life between her South Asian background and her surroundings in Texas. Cultural displacement is part of that experience, but the film is also built around friendship, resilience and the possibility of personal change later in life.
That perspective is central to Desai’s treatment of the material. Instead of framing coming of age as a transition reserved for adolescence, the film applies the idea to a woman confronting a new chapter in middle age.
Koirala: ‘There Is Still a Long Way to Go’
Koirala said the screenplay appealed to her partly because of the scarcity of meaningful roles for women in her age group.
“I have been quoted before on how there are not enough roles written for women of a certain age. Though things are gradually changing now, there is still a long way to go,” she said.
Her decision was also shaped by conversations with Desai and the wider filmmaking team.
“However, ‘Cowgirls & Indians’ was brought to me, and after meeting the team, meeting Tejal, and listening to the entire script and his intention for why he wrote it, I knew this story has great potential to cross boundaries while having fun doing so.”
Koirala added a lighter note about the physical setting awaiting her in Texas.
“I'm looking forward to braving the Texas terrain while on horseback drinking my chai.”
Why Tejal Desai Chose Koirala
Desai sees Koirala’s ability to convey both vulnerability and resolve as essential to Asha.
Referring to a body of work that stretches from Dil Se to Heeramandi, the filmmaker described her performances in terms of “realism, vulnerability, and strength.”
“Asha needs exactly a woman whose whole history lives in her eyes and the strength to carry a story on her shoulders,” Desai said.
That description gives a useful indication of how the film is being conceived. Asha is not simply a character observing cultural differences around her; the story is intended to rest on her emotional experience.
For an independent production, that makes the casting particularly significant. Much of the film's weight will depend on the lead performance and on whether Asha's personal journey can connect beyond the specific cultures and locations in which it unfolds.
A New Setting in a Career Spanning Three Decades
Koirala has moved between mainstream hits and more intimate character-driven films throughout a career of more than 30 years.
Her major credits include 1942: A Love Story, Mani Ratnam’s Bombay and Dil Se, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Khamoshi: The Musical. After working more selectively in recent years, she returned to a large-scale production as Mallikajaan in Bhansali’s Netflix period drama Heeramandi.
Cowgirls & Indians takes her in another direction.
Rather than the elaborate period setting of Heeramandi, the new film places her in contemporary Texas and builds its narrative around a woman caught between cultural familiarity and an unfamiliar environment.
It is also a relatively uncommon proposition in both Indian and American mainstream filmmaking: a story of reinvention built explicitly around a middle-aged South Asian woman.
Production Scheduled for November
The film is due to begin shooting in November, with Austin and surrounding parts of Texas providing the principal locations.
Banskota is producing, while Desai will direct from his own screenplay as he expands the ideas explored in Cowboys and Hindus into feature length.
Details about the rest of the cast, distribution plans and a release date have not yet been announced.
For now, the project marks another international turn for Koirala at a point when her choice of roles has become increasingly selective. More importantly for Cowgirls & Indians, her casting gives Desai a performer with the experience to anchor a story that treats middle age not as an epilogue, but as the beginning of another chapter.
