Siddhartha Khosla on bringing his 'most artful self' to 'This Is Us' and 'Looking for Alaska' and future of Goldspot
Siddhartha Khosla has proven to be a thought-provoking artist with an extensive catalog of compositions he has created for film and television. The Emmy-nominated multi-instrumentalist and singer, apart from his success as frontman of Goldspot, has amassed critical reception for his deep-seated, emotionally-touching, and intellectual mixed scores on shows like 'This Is Us', 'Looking for Alaska, 'The Kids Are Alright', and many more.
Khosla, with a heritage in India and established in the US, has dipped his music-making fingertips in several genres, including comedy on the episodic 'Sunnyside' on the 'Nancy Drew' series, action on Marvel's 'Runaways' among others.
In an exclusive interview with MEA WorldWide (MEAWW), Khosla shared some of his ideas behind such projects and his future plans.
Of all the projects you've worked on, do you have one that is particularly close to your heart?
They all are close to my heart in their own ways. To me, it's really about the relationships that are there behind the screen, the relationships that are there that brought me to the projects in the first place. I value my relationships I have with Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, with whom I did 'Looking for Alaska'. It was one of my favorite projects I've ever worked on. 'This Is Us' and Dan Fogleman is part of that as well. He's one of my close friends from college, so there's a deep love there and appreciation for each other. So for me, it's like trying to pick a favorite child, it's very hard to.
But I'm very fortunate that in both 'Looking for Alaska' and 'This Is Us' I've been able to be incredibly creative and been able to make music that's coming from my soul in both of those cases. So that's been really special. So I think for me whenever I have a relationship that I value, as in the case of Dan Fogleman or Josh and Stephanie, or the music supervisors I get to work with on both projects... Alex Patsavas and I have a really good relationship, she's the music supervisor of Josh and Stephanie's shows, and Manish Raval and Tom Wolfe are the music supervisors of 'This Is Us'. All of us have a really good bond and that's what keeps me going ultimately. That's what inspires me.
These show creators in both of these cases really want me to bring my most artful self to these projects, and there's a creative trust which is really inspiring to be around and it makes you do stuff that you normally wouldn't have done. The 'This Is Us' score, you would never have expected a very Indian sounding score to be on the US airwaves on an NBC show. That comes from Dan Fogleman. Even though I'm the Indian guy in this, it comes from Fogleman saying, 'Go with your gut. Go with what's coming from you.' I remember saying to Dan at one point, 'Is the score getting too Indian?' He said, 'No. Do your thing, I love it. Do more of it.' And that's what inspires you, that's what makes you love what you do.
If you could pick a genre of television that you haven't scored for, which would it be? And what kind of music comes to mind that you are interested in making for such a genre?
I guess the one genre I have not done anything in is horror. I'm doing a little bit on 'Nancy Drew'. There are elements of horror in 'Nancy Drew', but I think this very, very subtle horror is something that I feel like I could do well and I haven't really gotten a chance to do that yet.
I've been fortunate that I've been able to do comedy, drama, emotional drama, dark sort of dissonant work in some dramas here and there, and psychological dramas. So I've been fortunate to be able to do different things but yeah, maybe that might be something that I haven't done yet, that could be interesting.
There's got to be an organic balance or an interplay between the score and the visuals - there's no need to overpower what's happening on-screen - but has there ever been a moment in your career where a scene was so visually powerful that you felt it didn't require any music, or perhaps just the bare minimum amount?
Yeah, that's a great question because sometimes... It's odd that we're doing an interview with a composer about the value of music to screen but not enough people talk about what you just asked, which is very, very, very important, which is also knowing when to not have music. And sometimes that comes from the larger relationship that the music on the show has to the show where you can take those risks.
For 'Looking for Alaska', there was an episode this season - it was a really dramatic episode at the top of the second-to-last episode - where we find out that Alaska Young, the heroin of our show, has died, and the editor made a decision to have no music for the first couple of minutes of the show and it lived in the silence that was deafening, but then when the music came in, it was doubly effective because you were almost waiting for it.
Two things had to happen to make that work. One is that when the music did enter, it had to have been really impactful, and so there had to have been trust that the music could carry the next scene when it had to come in. But there was also trust and faith in the picture and the writing and the directing and the performances of the actors that did not warrant or need any music. And so, those two together made it happen. There had to have been confidence that when the music did come in, it just crushed you when it came in and that the performances that proceeded it were strong enough to live without it.
That is a really powerful tool in filmmaking. The decision of when to have music is as important as the music that actually gets put into a scene. I strongly believe that. So, those choices are very important. They just set the tone for your show. They also show a certain level of confidence in the picture that you have too.
We know you're super busy, but can we expect to hear anything from your band Goldspot in the coming years?
Yeah, of course. There's going to be stuff in the future. I've been slowly writing pieces here and there. I've kind of been working on my own little classical album as well, just for myself, here and there. I'm only one track in, but when I have the time, I definitely plan on doing more Goldspot stuff. My life has been consumed with television and film, and so it's been very hard to focus on that just yet.
Read more on the interview with Khosla here.