Freida Pinto is set to star in and executive produce the adaptation of Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan. (Photo: Freida Pinto/Instagram) Actor Freida Pinto is set to star in Spy Princess, a limited series about World War II spy Noor Inayat Khan. An adaptation of author Shrabani Basu’s Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan, the screenplay of the series has been written by Olivia Hetreed, of Girl with a Pearl Earring fame. Shrabani will serve as a consultant on the project.
Calling Noor the “most unlikely heroine of World War 2,” Frieda Pinto said that she was thrilled to explore her complex sense of duty.
“Sending women to the front line is controversial even now. Then it was unthinkable. Sending a Sufi mystic, who won’t use a gun, daughter of a long-haired Indian Guru who preaches love and peace – ridiculous! But Noor thrives, not in spite of her differences, but because of them. Her struggle to reconcile her values with the desire to find her own path and with her complex sense of duty is something I am so excited to explore and to recreate,” Freida told Deadline.
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In an Instagram post, the actor elaborated on her decision to sign the series. Freida said that she found comfort in choosing to play a woman who showed a quiet strength and intelligence in the face of a crisis.
“At a time in this world where we are all looking at leadership and courage to guide and lead us all back to some semblance of sanity and order, I take great comfort in the quiet strength, grace, intelligence and grit that Noor Inayat Khan possessed in the face of chaos during WW2.
“A real underdog who was written off as ‘not overburdened with brains’, who ended up being the SOE’s first female wireless operator sent into occupied France who helped set up the Secret Armies that would rise up on D-Day, astonishing all those doubted what she was capable of,” Freida wrote.
Recently, Noor Inayat Khan was brought to screen by actor Radhika Apte in Prime Video’s A Call to Spy.