Anjana Vasan shrugs: “People can be quite picky about ‘authenticity’ in drama. “Nobody cares if a Danish prince or a duke of Verona sounds like he went to Eton.” However, he notes that more questions are asked when a person of different skin color stars in Shakespeare and Ibsen’s plays. “People talk about the Western canon being so big that it appeals to everyone. Then they think it’s amazing that someone like me can see himself in that world.”
The 37-year-old actress won an Olivier Award last year for her role as Stella in the Almeida Theatre’s production of A Streetcar Named Desire and has received back-to-back television Bafta nominations for the network’s We Are Lady Parts (2023). 4 sitcoms and Black Mirror: Demon 79 (2024) – Reminisces about his childhood in Singapore’s melting pot culture with his passion for various dramas.
Born in 1987 to a Tamil Hindu family in Chennai, India (formerly known as Madras), Vasan was only four years old when his family moved to Singapore. “I know some people think the city is shiny, superficial and all about finance,” says Vasan. “But these things were just background noise to me because I was drawn to the vibrant cultural scene of the city. I grew up loving theater. “As people from all over the world come to live and work in Singapore, I have seen people from all over the world perform Shakespeare, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill on stage.”
Vasan was so in thrall to Singapore theater that he planned to spend his career there. However, after graduating with a degree in theater studies at the National University of Singapore, he was unable to get a scholarship and instead started a master’s course in Cardiff in 2011. “After spending most of my life in such a dense, high-rise urban environment, Cardiff was like an oasis,” she says. “When my teachers suggested I stay in the UK and see if I could get some pieces, I decided to give it a try.”
He immediately took on small roles at the National Theater and the RSC, as well as the Channel 4 comedy Fresh Meat. It’s not hard to see what casting directors see; her intelligent emotional range is reflected in her satellite dish eyes. He laughs: “They cover a fair amount of the surface area of my face. “Having big eyes makes it very difficult to lie, and when I’m shooting and the camera is pointed at my face, I feel like the audience can feel my every thought.”
Unusually, Vasan appeared mostly in classical dramas on the stage and mostly in comedies on the big screen; In his own words, “Crying on stage and making jokes for the camera”. She played a witch in Kenneth Branagh’s Macbeth and was nominated for an Evening Standard Theater Award for her role in A Doll’s House at the Lyric Hammersmith. Before her role as Muslim feminist Amina in We Are Lady Parts and her transformation from a docile shopgirl to a demonic serial killer in Black Mirror: Demon 79, television audiences will have seen her as an unlikely assassin in the fourth series of Killing Eve.
Nida Manzoor writes and directs the stunningly anarchic We Are Lady Parts, now back for a second series. Born in London and of Pakistani Muslim heritage, she was raised in Singapore until the age of 10. The sitcom stars Vasan as a sweet, nerdy, hijab-wearing biologist who becomes the lead guitarist for a feminist Muslim who steps outside her comfort zone. Punk band described in a voice-over as “a muddled mix of hash anthems and sour girl power – one part boredom and two parts identity crisis.” The women in the group are all trying to find their voices without giving up their beliefs or being rejected by their communities. There’s a joyful, comical anger to her original songs, such as the lovelorn Bashir with the Beautiful Beard and Voldemort Under My Headscarf, in which women respond to the terror they’ve wrought on the streets of London.
Vasan was already a singer-songwriter — he released his debut album in 2017 — but chuckled at the challenge of learning to play electric guitar for the show, “embracing more of Amina’s folk guitar background.” “I felt so bad,” she says. “But Amina is a very elegant and unique character. That’s not nice, she. So it was fun to learn how to tap into his liberating punk spirit.”
Vasan, who was auditioning for the role, improvised and bit the head of a flower. “I think Amina is a clown, and I’ve always thought clowns are really powerful. Growing up, I loved comics like Charlie Chaplin and Lucille Ball. “At drama school, I started to notice that actors who could make people laugh often acted in serious roles, but more serious actors often couldn’t do comedy.”
Vasan says the cast of We Are Lady Parts have developed strong bonds because they play all the songs you hear on the show. “We rehearsed and rehearsed and we ended up with the kind of chemistry you can’t fake. Some songs are so fast that there’s no real room for ‘acting’ anyway, because we’re all playing so much… I found myself actually wanting the camera to zoom in on my keyboard to show that I was actually playing these songs. solos!”
Did Vasan, who says he was “not very spiritual” as a cultural Hindu, have any reservations about playing a Muslim character? “Yes,” he nodded. “I had a very honest conversation with Nida because the sitcom started as a short film in 2018. When the series was ordered, I had no idea where the characters were going and felt the need to ask Nida how much money I had. The character’s faith would play a role in the scenes.” Manzoor insisted on Vasan’s casting, noting the common crossovers between culture and religion for most South Asian women. “Amina wears a headscarf and never compromises her faith,” says Vasan. “But he’s also an individual on a musical journey, from folk to punk, from angst to confidence, and it’s a journey I think he could plan for me.”
The only downside to the role is that it resulted in Vasan receiving a lot of scripts about women in headscarves. He grumbles: “Lazy casting! “I also said no to other pieces of hijab that didn’t look right on me.”
But she “absolutely enjoyed” her very different role in Demon 79, although she noted that it was “disturbing” to think about the racism her Indian character Nida faced in Charlie Brooker’s take on 1970s northern England. We see Nida grapple with casual racism from her employers (who ask her to stop bringing Indian food to work and eat something “normal”) and violent threats from National Front skinheads who write slogans on her front door.
It’s ironic that brown skin is so frowned upon in an age where everything is brown, from store staff uniforms to everyone’s interior decoration. Horror takes a dark and funny turn when he accidentally creates a demon; Gaap appears in the form of Boney M’s frontman Bobby Farrell (played by Paapa Essiedu) and tells him that he must commit a series of brutal murders. to prevent an impending apocalypse.
Vasan points out that although Demon 79 is set in the past, it constantly looks to the future: “I think these things [political movements and tensions] Move in cycles. When you watch the news, it’s hard not to worry about where we’re going. Politicians’ names and faces may change, they may look nicer than the racist politician in the series, but the gossip is just as scary.” Vasan nods and closes his beautiful, big eyes. “We like to believe we’re over this, but we’re never too far from hurtling toward destruction.”
We Are Lady Parts returns to Channel 4 on May 30