By Uzair Bhatti
“Watch it you stupid Paki”
Wait. What. Did someone just call me that…ME?
Glass shatters.
This is the story of a blissfully ignorant boy. Born and brought up in London, the son of two hard-working immigrant parents. Instilled in him from a very young age was the belief that he could be whomever he wanted to be, as long as he worked hard. Simple enough. This belief helped mould him into a confident, liberal, cosmopolitan young man; strolling through life with his head held high, cool as a cucumber with only the sky the limit. You see he’d always been told he could be whomever he wanted to be. He’d always mixed with whomever he’d wanted to mix with. Over the years he had been built up by his parents and friends to believe that anything was achievable. But in one fell swoop at the age of 17, this image was shattered. Maybe his ethnicity and race actually did matter. As awful as the act of accidentally walking into someone was, did it warrant…that? Why was he called that word?
First time for everything. Disclaimer; He survived the incident and has never been called it since. An addendum to this disclaimer, he’d rather you just say it, and here’s why. The reason he was so blissfully ignorant was because he wasn’t aware that he was different. He thought he was the same as everyone else. He didn’t realise his skin tone was brown. Asian. Whatever you want to call it. His facial features were in fact also Asian. And if we really want to get down and dirty, his Dad was Muslim – shhh, don’t mention that word. Apparently these things matter and like all good things, even his carefree ignorance had to come to an end. Fast-forward five years. Knowing he wanted to become an actor he applied to drama school and got in. LAMDA, to be precise.
However, things took a turn for the worse for him when his parents passed whilst he was still in training. Suddenly, the support system which had nurtured him was no longer there. He realised that making a career out of being anyone he wanted to be without the safety net, love and guidance he was so used too, was tough. Then his Industry, our Industry, the elite member’s club where everyone is welcome, subject to conforming to their T’s and C’s, comes along.
Agents
He has a fantastic one but it wasn’t always like this. In the beginning, when he was looking for one, he started to see, or rather hear, a pattern. “Unfortunately your casting is very similar to another boy”. Initially that was received with the naivety of anyone who is starting out in their chosen career. He assumed the system was right and that was fair enough. He moved on. But one meeting turned into a dozen with turned into a deluge and it was the same every time. Some detailed research into Agents’ lists and yup, they were right, they did have another British-Asian boy on their books. And this one, well he was gloriously un-different enough to not tick the requisite boxes. But can you blame them? Agents react to demands and if the demand isn’t there then they simply don’t need more than a handful of Asian actors on their books.
Then one day, finally, he got a meeting, and a big one at that!
Agent: “What’s your casting?”
Boy: “Ermm” (“Bond, maybe Kylo Ren, or even Jack from Titanic?”)
Agent: “There are lots of good small roles in big budget films. Uber driver, shopkeeper. That sort of thing”.
Wait. Bond drives Astons not Ubers? The studio must be broadening their sponsorship portfolio. Oh, you meant an actual Uber driver, and not the Robert de Niro-style Taxi Driver.
Glass shattering moment number two.
He’s not knocking these jobs at all. But the kind of stereotypical roles that seem available to him explains why Agents have little interest in artists like him. After all, how much are these roles worth to them? With every passing word in this meeting, his eyes opened a little wider each time. The nagging seed of doubt at the back of his mind started to sprout and had pretty much flourished into a horticultural wonder by the end of it. Maybe, just maybe, he couldn’t simply work hard to achieve his dreams. There was more to it than that. But then again, maybe he was just a little bit entitled. There are plenty of successful, respected and most importantly, employed, actors of colour. He resolved to work harder to try and do better.
Casting Directors
Casting Director: “You’ve got a really lovely skin tone”
Boy: “Thank you” (“this matters because…”)
Casting Director: “It can work against you as it may confuse the audience as to where you’re from. So what is your background?”
Was he too brown, not brown enough or just the right type of Goldilocks-approved brown?
P.S His heritage is Pakistani-Indian, born in Newham and a proud Brit.
Drama School
At LAMDA he played many roles that were traditionally played by caucasian people, which was somewhat progressive because they were usually periphery roles, but it was all part of the training. Dare he ask to play a leading role? No, crush that thought, he had been specifically told that they had tried in the past to get the rights to Ayad Akthar’s “Disgraced”. They hadn’t, so he should just stay in his lane and only consider stepping out once they secured rights to an Asian play. So much for colour blind casting.
It wasn’t all bad. He did land a more significant role. He got to play, ‘a brother who beat up his sister because she wore a mini skirt’. This was a role written for him at LAMDA for his showcase film to the Industry. He recalls specifically how uncomfortable he felt when he read the script. He even brought it up with his director and was reminded that this sort character existed in the real world and that it was his job as actor to bring the character to life. Still uncomfortable, he implored the director for a rewrite, which happened! He was now playing the role of ‘a brother who beat up his sister for wearing tight jeans’. Did he want to scream, shout and refuse to do it. Yes. Did he play the part in the end? Yes. Why? The alternative was to not partake and start a movement that would inspire institutional reform from the grassroots up. He only needed a couple of blockbusters under his belt, maybe 78 million Instagram followers and a wide network of supportive and influential friends in the
Industry
He felt stifled. His voice hadn’t been heard and his biggest fans were no longer there to build him up and give him confidence in his convictions. So, his artistic passion and expression constrained in a strait-jacket of societal stereotypes, he turned up on set determined to give the best performance of a ‘brother who beat up his sister for wearing something that apparently people like him didn’t like’. Why can’t we, the Industry, stand at the vanguard of change and recognise that the images pedaled by the media do not represent everyone, all the time? Why are we bowing to this simplistic representation of socio-cultural stereotypes? He doesn’t even know or recognise half these people because they weren’t the Asian people he saw growing up.
Where’s the Asian?
Britz
Indian Summers
Murdered by my father
Goodness Gracious Me
Informer
Citizen Khan
This isn’t an exhaustive list. They have been groundbreaking shows in their own right creating the space for these types of conversations to emerge. But they are stereotypical depictions. If you tell these stories, you have to tell the stories about the middle, the group of people that sit between these binary oppositions. These are the people with “normal” nuanced lives whose defining features aren’t their affiliation to ISIS, it can’t be simply that British-Asians are portrayed as such. That will then be the narrative that takes the lead especially when there’s very few shows on British TV where Asians just play people with full and rich lives.
Wanting to be represented, to have a fully fledged 3D character whose ethnicity is not their defining feature, is ok. The protagonist of our story here did just that in fact. Last December, along with a group of his acting cohort from LAMDA, he co-produced a short film in which he played a regular guy doing regular things and that he was Asian was mentioned…never. It is stories like this that better represent the people he recognised growing up.
Being pro-diversity does not make you anti-meritocracy, let’s make that clear. There are amazing actors of all colours. This is not about one having more opportunity than the other, it’s about equality and recognition of the unconscious, and conscious, biases which are prevalent in society, and also our Industry. Let’s go back to the start. “Watch it you stupid Paki”. To the gentleman in question, at least you were honest in your discrimination. To the industry. You might as well call him as such.
He’s no longer going to be afraid of offending you or accidentally backing his Uber into your well manicured front lawn. That blissfully ignorant 17 year old is no longer ignorant. He is damn well aware of his skin colour, because our Industry has held a mirror up to his face, repeatedly, to remind him of his difference. And he thanks you for doing this because you’ve only just gone and empowered him. He loves his difference and his two best cheerleaders may be watching from afar, but he’s still got their mantra with him.
You can be anyone you want to be as long you work hard. And don’t let anyone ever tell you anything else. Keep going.
Uzair is a British Asian actor tired of feeling like an other. He’s hoping that any other actor regardless of ethnicity, who reads this, knows that they are not alone. If anyone ever wants to reach out to him they can find him on Twitter at @UzairBhatti22