From Priyanka Chopra in Love Again to Pallavi Sharda in Wedding Season, we’re gradually seeing more South Asian women playing the lead in romantic comedies. It’s a genre that’s been long overdue for a revamp – a fresh and more realistic take where brown women aren’t merely the sidekick best friend, the awkward nerd, or the doctor in the emergency medical scene.
Picture This deviates from this Hollywood norm, building on the success of the aforementioned films and taking the idea of a brown female lead in another direction. Not only does Bridgerton star Simone Ashley play the lead protagonist Pia, but she’s surrounded by other strong South Asian women in Sindhu Vee (playing her mother, Laxmi) and Anoushka Chadha (playing her sister, Sonal).
“I’ve grown up watching rom-coms, and you really never see yourself in those characters, in those Bridget Jones [films], and like the chaos of those characters as well,” Chadha tells Draw Your Box.
In reading a script that challenges what she’s always seen, Chadha says the decision to be part of the Prime Video production (based on Aussie film, Five Blind Dates) was a no-brainer.
“It’s really hard to fully immerse yourself when it’s just not what you look like on there [on the screen]. So, this is such an amazing film and such an amazing script. We can play these characters,” she explains, saying it’s important for Hollywood to “take the risk” in diversifying casting choices. “The risk has paid off this time,” she says. “It looks amazing.”
Sindhu Vee, known for her hilariously entertaining stand-up comedy and her recent role in The Pradeeps Of Pittsburgh, agrees it’s time to see more multifaceted brown people on screen. While agreeing with Chadha about the importance of risk-taking in Hollywood, she also highlights that the premise of a rom-com isn’t too far from South Asians’ reality. And, there’s a lot of us out there. So, perhaps the stakes aren’t as high as movie execs want to believe?
“There are South Asians having romances in the world, it’s not like you don’t do that,” Vee tells Draw Your Box. “It’s not like every South Asian person is having an arranged marriage in this day and age and ‘oops, that’s it’. No, they are having romances.
“They’re having romances with people who are South Asian and who are not. You write what you know, and the writer of this script looks around and has written what she knew. I think that’s how simple it is and how simple it should be.”
In the film, struggling photographer Pia receives a prediction that true love awaits in her next five dates. With her sister Sonal’s wedding looming and her family playing matchmaker, her ex (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) reappears, throwing her love life into chaos. While the idea of arranged marriages relationships, a meddling family and a big Indian wedding are familiar elements in South Asian-led films, this movie’s diversity in brown-ness sets it apart.
South Asia’s known to boast a hugely popular market for skin lightening products, while the age-old idea of colourism – favouring fairer complexions over darker skin tones – is still rampant. These euro-centric beauty ideals have long been reflected on screens, where brown women with lighter skin tones have more often been cast in lead roles. It’s therefore refreshing to see a darker-skinned South Asian woman, like Ashley (whose parents are Indian Tamil), take the reins in Picture This. Vee not only applauds the film for casting multiple South Indian women with darker complexions, but shares her own experiences facing colourism in and out of the workplace.
As the daughter of a North Indian mum “who was very fair” and a Tamilian father who she says “was very dark”, Vee says she learnt about colourism from a very young age.
“My aunts would say things like, ‘Oh, she has nice features, but oh, she’s dark.’ I was seven, eight, nine years old, so by the time I was 14, I had understood that my appearance as a girl was always going to be flawed because I was so dark,” she tells us.
“It’s something I internalised. I didn’t worry about it, and then by the grace of god, I showed up in the west at the age of 21 and everyone was like, ‘Check out your tan’. I was like, ‘What?”
With these events having impacted how she viewed beauty and her sense of self, Vee was genuinely confused when Yves Saint Laurent came knocking with a modelling opportunity.
“I’d been asked to do some modeling in India for a big French outlet, or whatever, for Yves Saint Laurent,” she cheekily smiles. “I think that was like a moment of cognitive dissonance for me, because it was like, ‘How could they ask me? I’m so ugly, I’m so dark.’ That’s what I was told every day.
“Now I haven’t carried all that through with me up till this age,” she continues. But nonetheless, she recognises the significance of this film having South Asian cast members who don’t reflect the “South Asian looks often put on a pedestal”.
“I think that’s important for the South Asian community [to see],” she says, adding that it’s part of what makes this movie particularly monumental for the diaspora.
“I actually don’t think Western Caucasians are like, ‘Hmm, she’s a very dark Indian.’ I don’t think it’s them. I think it’s us. And I think it’s very nice to have two South Indian women in this film,” Vee continues, referring to Ashley and herself, but not without also giving a nod to the importance of Chadha also being in the cast.
“I think it’s important to us as South Asians, and it’s a very strong message to the South Asian community that skin colour really isn’t about your looks.”
The movie’s release, which is two days ahead of International Women’s Day (IWD), is rather timely given the powerful female presence driving the film. When asked about what it means to be a strong brown woman in the context of the film and IWD more broadly, Chadha and Vee offer two very different, yet utterly candid responses.
Having grown up in the UK around people who didn’t look like her, Chadha shares past experiences of shame, and reconciling her British and Indian identities.
“I’ve come on a real journey of loving my brown skin and who I am,” says Chadha. “When I was younger, I was like, ‘Oh, why am I like this?’ Growing up, I was probably the only non-white girl in my friendship group. Sometimes I was slipping into [thinking], ‘Oh, everything’s different for me’. Now I’ve come on a journey of self love,” she smiles.
“There’s this poem that I love that says, ‘celebrate your strength’. And I’ve realised that my brown skin is my strength. It’s my superpower,” she reveals. “I love that quote so much I literally have it tattooed on.”
Meanwhile Vee draws parallels to her character Laxmi when she reflects on what makes a strong brown woman.
“What I love about being a strong brown woman as portrayed in this film is that Laxmi goes out and figures out that she’s more than a mum,” she says. “She’s not just a divorcee whose life is over, and she tries to figure out, ‘Who am I? What are my needs? What is my agency as a person?’
“And I think that’s a very strong brown woman vibe.”
Picture This premieres on Prime Video on Thursday, March 6.
Top image source: Supplied/Prime Video
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