As a supplement to the feature on Cooking With Stella , here are some additional quotes from star Don McKellar about India’s class system, Canadian film, and costar Lisa Ray.

On having his own personal servant—a driver—in India while making a movie about the complexity of having servants:

“He’d hang around all day only for you, and it was complicated. I really liked him. We became quite close, and I forced him to have dinner with me sometimes, and the relationship grew. He was always trying to figure me out, figure out who I was. He kept saying, ”˜Sir what do you do? What kind of songs do you sing in the movie?’ I said, ”˜No, no, I don’t sing songs in the film.’ And he said later, ”˜I know! You sing the comic songs in the film!’ And I said, ”˜No, we don’t sing in this film at all.' And then when he drove me to the airport, I said, ”˜Thank you very much,’ and he said, ”˜Sir, I will be the first one to buy the soundtrack for the movie!”

On working amid the early-’90s heyday of indie film in the Canadian film industry versus today:

“There’s more of a sense of an industry and there’s more television today, but on the other hand, in those old days of Roadkill and Highway 61 [films he made with director Bruce McDonald], we had no burden of an industry, and in some ways that was good for us. We had more freedom. We were trying to make the kind of cool movies that we wanted to see, and we didn’t care so much about industry expectations so much.”

On costar Lisa Ray (the green-eyed lead in Water), who announced she had multiple myeloma a few months after shooting stopped on Cooking With Stella and has been blogging about her treatment and fight against the disease, including a recent stem-cell transplant:

“Lisa Ray is in India right now, but we keep in touch. She’s doing really well, considering; I mean, it’s pretty amazing. We didn’t know she was sick when we were shooting this film, although she was not feeling 100 percent. She has so much spirit it’s humbling.”