"It wasn't just a teacher and a student," Ali Fazal says of the previously almost unknown relationship between a young Muslim clerk from India and Queen Victoria revealed in Victoria & Abdul. "It was love, it was friendship."

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The little-known story of Queen Victoria and her beloved Indian servant Abdul Karim was once so little-known that Shrabani Basu, author of the 2010 non-fiction biography Victoria & Abdul, spent three days searching the graveyards of Agra in Utter Pradesh in order to find Karim’s final resting place. Happily, thanks to…

“No one really knows what it’s like to be queen.” It’s 1887, and the British Empire is celebrating Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee — 50 years on the throne. Kings and princes are in attendance. So is Abdul Karim, who has traveled from his famine-ravaged India to the event to present the aging monarch with a ceremonial…

EXCLUSIVE: Bollywood actor Ali Fazal (Happy Bhaag Jayegi, Furious 7) has boarded Stephen Frears’ Victoria and Abdul opposite the previously announced Judi Dench in the Working Title-BBC-Focus Features pic. Fazal takes the role of Abdul Karim, the young servant from India who became an unlikely confidant and teacher to…