Series Two, Episode Six - Komal Amin

Series Two, Episode Six - Komal Amin

KOMAL: So I got into acting when I was about 13, when my family moved from the UK to Switzerland. And there was this local sort of Youth Theatre that met in Zurich city centre, where we moved to, and my parents encouraged me to join it because I was struggling socially to fit in at school, so they thought this might be something outside of school where I could make friends and stuff. And then I just kind of fell in love with theatre from there. They were a really great theatre company, and were the foundation of why I really love theatre. We used to do all sorts of shows, whether it was locally in Zurich or abroad - we went to Paris and Poland and America, all sorts of places. It was a really great theatre company and I just got to experience so much, and obviously my friendship group really did stem from there. And so it was the first place I sort of felt like I belonged, especially when I moved away from everything I knew in England. And then I kind of took it from there. I kind of had a lapse in acting, as well, like a typical Asian - not necessarily typical, but a lot of Asians I think relate to this, in the sense that my parents weren't so comfortable with sending me to drama school. They claim that that's not true!

Laughter

KOMAL: But they felt that I should get a real degree first, and my careers adviser said the same thing. So I got quote-unquote “real degree” first, but in that time of being at university I came across a lot of experiences which put me off acting. And it took until I was about 24 to realise that those were isolated - not necessarily isolated incidents, but that shouldn't be the reason I lose my passion for acting. Because you get bad experiences in every workplace, so that shouldn't throw me off my dreams.

Funnily enough, I went home for a weekend to hang out with my parents and my mum's routine with me is we’ll go home and my mum will tell me about this latest Bollywood film and be like, ‘You want to watch a Bollywood film?’ Because she's always trying to get me to reconnect with my culture. So I do, and there’s some really good Bollywood films out there these days, but one of them is called 3 Idiots buy a very famous actor called Amir Khan, and the whole film is about following your dreams and doing what you love and being passionate. I love that film, and at the end I was like ... already thinking ‘what am I doing with my life?’ but, you know, I really need to go back to what I really love, and that's acting. And this time my parents were really supportive, and knew that if it's something that still keeps on coming back to me then it must be something I'm serious about.

LAURA: How did you make that change? Because that must have been a massive shift, to go from a full-time job to suddenly getting back into acting. How did you go about it?

KOMAL: It's interesting that now, in hindsight, I realise how little support I had in terms of knowledge. Because I was in the corporate world, my mum’s a cake maker and my dad's an accountant, so they don't know anything about acting. So I kind of just Googled it. I just didn't know anything about the industry, so I did this part-time course. I was living in Leeds at the time so I had to kind of commute back and forth for this course, and then I quit my job and dove into

the acting world. And I realised that no one will take you seriously if you haven't been to a quote-unquote “accredited drama school” - doesn't need quotes, does it?

Laughter

An accredited drama school. So I applied for some bachelor degrees, realised no one is going to give you money for another bachelor's degree, I don't have the money for 3 year drama course, so I was like, okay, I better go for a one year drama course. And I put the money together and I ended up going to East 15 and doing a Master's degree.

EMILY: What was your experience like a East 15?

KOMAL: It was great. It was very good in the sense that what we learnt ... the learning element was great, we learnt so much. And it was really intense and because I was so focused - like my bachelors first of all was something I was not that passionate about ,even though it was English and Theatre, but it's not the same. And I knew that this was my chance. Ao I really worked 24/7. It wasn't really a social thing for me, but I really worked hard to be the best I could be. But I think my personal experience - in hindsight, as well, because you don't realise it when you're there - is that being the only woman of colour in my class ... and also I don't think East 15 quite knew how to network to help students get into the real world. Each drama school has its connections and its network to help launch you after you graduate, and there was nothing there for me, especially is a person of colour. And personally, in my opinion, people dropped the ball on casting me properly in my showcase, and that's where it fell apart. So it took a long time after that setback, it took two years after graduating before I actually started getting regular work and started making a name for myself.

EMILY: When you say that you el like you feel like they dropped the ball in terms of the casting, what do you feel ... ?

KOMAL: I think there's a very intrinsic thing in people of colour in having your heritage come into the work. Not a single thing in the curriculum ever reflected anything about me or who I am, so already I'm limited to that. You should be able to play anything as an actor, but for some reason people just weren’t picking mem and whether or not that's to do with colour - people could debate that, but I still think that people couldn't see past colour at some points. Cos you could go down the road that maybe I'm a shit actor but, why go down that road?

Laughter

KOMAL: And I also didn't really realise it at the time, so by the time it was too late I turned to my tutor and said, ‘No one's picked a scene for me.’ And he was like, ‘Well, you should be thinking about it for yourself. If you realised no one's picking a scene for you, go and find stuff yourself.’ By then it's a bit too late, and it was a bit of a mad rush, and it wasn't what I wanted it to be. And then only once I got into the real world, the acting world, I read plays myself and I went to see

theatre in London. Wow, all this modern work that is being created in the last few years, especially, connects with me so much. I see characters not quite 100% like me on stage, we're still not there yet, but so much more than like The Cherry Orchard or even a lot of the modern plays that people are writing. Like David Hare and those sorts of playwrights, Sarah Kane, all those playwrights that are classic British modern playwrights. Again, the characters, there's nothing really there for me personally. But there are so many other writers of colour that have created, especially in the last few years, great works that could be amazing scenes for somebody like me. There is something really important about reflecting part of yourself on stage. It's really hard to articulate, but I did this course by a director called Kristine Landon Smith, and she calls it “intrapersonal acting”, which is sort of engaging all the elements of who you are as a human being and not necessarily always bringing them out on stage, but elements of that come out on stage. If you can't connect to the text, how do you connect to the text? And sometimes it's easier if you're in a world where it's structurally built for your average white British actor, Shakespeare is literally part of their white British history, so to bring that on stage, they can evoke elements of their identity, you know, where they're from, wherever part of the UK and stuff. And whilst I was born in this country, my history and my background goes further afield, and what do I draw from inside my own cultural identity? My first few acting jobs were always parts where I would play somebody from India or Pakistan or Bangladesh, literally somebody who was born and raised there. And whilst I look that, I’m very much not that. I'm British-Asian, in my experience and cultural upbringing. I’ve been Indian at home but also very much rooted in British culture. And so sometimes I connect, but I don't connect. Which is fine as an actor, but that's when you start stereotyping parts. And then this year I did this play called Trojan Horse, and I just realised this is the first time I've ever done a show where it's truly rooted in being British-Asian. And I was like, oh my goodness, I'm playing a British-Asian character, and that's like, oh, this is telling a real life story about real life British-Asian people and their experiences. Riz Ahmed actually talked about this recently, where he said how when you have an immigrant population coming to a country and sort of integrating themselves into that national identity, like having their stories up on screen, like the Italians did in America when Goodfellas and The Godfather came out, it kind of helps to use this identity of being Italian and also being American. And we don't have those for like Indians and Pakistanis, we do obviously a little bit, like bhaji on the beach and goodness gracious me, but that's in the 90s - the 90s! I mean how long ago was that. We don't have anything beyond that, really. We need more than that, we need things like Goodfellas and things like that to sort of inspire a generation of people and help people see that we are both of South Asian descent and we are British. We are both in equal measure in many ways.

LAURA: That’s such an interesting point, actually. I've never thought about Italian American film being a product of an immigrant culture that's become a massive part of the canon of American cinema. I've never really thought of it like that, it's an interesting point, and there absolutely does need to be more of that in Britain. There just isn't at all, really.

KOMAL: Because no one now thinks that the Italians who came over are anything less than American, they've been there so long. But we have. We've had Asians in this country for a very

long time, even before the 60s when a big influx came, but where is something in the media and film which kind of inspires what it means to be British Asian?

EMILY: After you've left East 15, did you feel like you were coming into the industry with a slightly negative outlook? Or did you kind of think, no, it didn't matter what happened at drama school, I was on my path and I knew what I wanted to be pursuing?

KOMAL: Only in hindsight but I realised that the first two years of my graduate life were really ... I don't want to say wasted, but not capitalised upon, and I just didn't have the opportunities that I think I should have had. But then also that might come from - I also realise that there's a hierarchy of graduates, if you come from a master's it’s slightly lower in the hierarchy, and within the drama schools there's another hierarchy, and within your teachers, and your connections from your school can get you in through the door - all those things make a difference. And so it took me 2 years a kind of trudging through, and in that time a lot of people do quit. A lot of my classmates quit acting, and I'm just ... I think again that for me, my privilege was - I was at my wit’s end in 2015, I literally was like almost being crushed under the weight of trying to make ends meet. Not getting any acting work, not being able to do my auditions properly because I had a job to hold down and they would only give me the time slot enough to go to the audition that I was working into the night to prepare for. And you never want to go in uncomfortable like that. And the privilege I had was that my parents have got this flat and they were like, ‘Look, this guy’s moving out, come and stay here.’ And I live here rent free, and I'm open about it because it's something that we all have to reckon with as an industry and a society. I have only been able to have the longevity in the industry - and the last 2 years have been great, I’ve had consistent work and some really nice work at that - but would have lasted that long if I had a job? Obviously I do have a job, but I mean, it's not the same when you have the pressure of rent and you have to live. iIt's just so so weighted against people who don't have money, so weighted against them. I think we really need to reassess how we judge people in the industry, because I also understand that there’s so many of us that there has to be a hierarchy. How do you choose from the 1000 people to bring through the door, of course you’re going to look at their CV and take a look at what school they went to, but I also think in the interest of trying to improve diversity, understand that there are privileges that allow you to go to some schools and allow you to do a 3 year over a 1 year, and take this into consideration somehow. I mean I worked in casting for a while, and it's interesting to see how many Asian actors come from a one year degree, and how actually common my situation is were the Asian family has said, ‘No, go to university first.’ And then they decided to quit the job and then go into acting, and then go to drama school for a master's degree. Like there’s so many of us out there that have just done a one year Masters.

LAURA: So in that two years that you came out and you said that you were struggling, what was it that got you through that?

KOMAL: Well I lived in a house of six other actors, so we all supported each other emotionally, which was great. And, I don't know ... my family, I guess. My parents are very much the kind of

people who, if you do something, go for it, do it and don't give up. So whenever I was like, ‘Oh, this is really hard!’ My mum would be like, ‘Don't you dare give up!’ ‘Alright then, I'm sorry, okay ...’ If I want to complain she’s like, ‘Don't complain! Just do it.’ So I did.

LAURA: There's been a lot of positive steps made towards representation and diversity after a very long time, and the conversation is happening a lot more. Do you feel that within that gender is taken into account enough, or do you feel that as a woman of colour you're still not being represented in the way that men of colour perhaps are?

KOMAL: Yeah. That's a really tough one for me, because I do have this habit of going to the theatre and watching movies and just counting how many men and how many women. And it is just - not that I dwell on it, but the roles out there for men far outweigh the roles out there for women, so that's a big swing. But then obviously being a woman of colour, that makes it even smaller. But if we're just talking men and women, yeah, I think men of colour have slightly more advantage than a woman of colour, for sure, just by virtue of like 4 to 1 ratio of men's to women's roles, the last I checked, anyway. Because we have this debate as well in the Asian community, it's like when we do plays - I'm not Muslim, but 90% of the roles, I'm going to play Muslim characters. Which sometimes is fine, but I sometimes feel like if the play is a very specific Muslim play, surely we should have representation of a Muslim person in the play. And it's something ... obviously then at what point are we - I mean because then the other side is saying, ‘Well an actor should be able to play anything.’ And it is a difficult conversation which I don't think I even have all the answers to.

EMILY: So, before we finish. We always like to wrap things up by asking about whether or not you’ve got any advice for anyone coming into the industry – whether it be from drama school or any other path.

KOMAL: Yeah, I do. I think about this a lot weirdly. But I think anybody that’s coming into the industry, I think, if you have a passion for like… acting… (as you obviously would if you want to be an actor) Go and see as much stuff as possible. Get to know who the directors are you like, who the actors are that you admire, and just be present in that world of fringe theatre and other theatre. Even if you can’t afford it, watch more TV shows, because I think when you really start building up an understanding of what you like and what you don’t like, and which directors you want to work with, and which you don’t, I think you can start to feel part of an industry that you sometimes can feel really isolated and alienated from. Especially when you’re not getting work. But if you feel like you’re constantly connecting and looking at who’s around you, who is in this industry, and who do you admire, then you feel like you have an opinion on things. It’ll just help with your sense of belonging in an industry in which it’s sometimes hard to feel like you can belong.