Twenty years ago, when Parminder Nagra played the role of an immigrant football junkie and a wannabe Beckham groupie in the film, Bend It Like Beckham (2002), she did not just kick a ball, she kicked some serious butt. When she balances a cauliflower on her knee or bends the ball behind a row of laundry, you can almost feel the scene swelling with the pride of thousands of invisible South Asian immigrant girls, with dreams of their own. As she smashes the ball into the net in the final match, the whole South Asian fraternity scored a collective goal. Or so they thought.
Many South Asian actors hoped Nagra would be their ticket out of anonymity. Sadly, they were wrong. As Snigdha Sur points out in an incisive piece in Juggernaut, it was not Nagra that the film turned into an overnight star, but her white co-stars Keira Knightley and Jonathan Rhys. According to the piece, Knightley is today worth $80 million versus Nagra's $4 million. While Knightley went on to star in one of the most famous franchises of all time, Pirates of the Caribbean, Nagra was relegated to wearing period petticoats and making googly eyes at Anne Hathaway as her best friend in Ella Enchanted-a blah role that completely undermined her badassery.
Cut to 20 years later. Period petticoats on South Asian women are in, thanks to Bridgerton 2's Kate Sharma, played by a brilliant Simone Ashley. Unlike Nagra in Ella Enchanted, Sharma is all sass, sex appeal and biting repartees. But here is the biggest difference: She is the one who gets the man in the end. In other words, she is the star of the show, the belle of the ball.
Cue, applause.
This story is from the July 03, 2022 edition of THE WEEK India.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the July 03, 2022 edition of THE WEEK India.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
BIOPIC AND BEYOND
Randeep Hooda may have proved his acting credentials with biopics, but typecast him at your own peril
Flutter of flimsy wings
Butterfly Research Centre in Bhimtal boasts 3,500 butterfly and moth specimens
SIMILAR STATES, DIFFERENT BATTLES
The Congress seems to have the edge in Telangana while in Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu and Jagan Mohan Reddy are locked in a bitter battle
A RIDE TO REMEMBER
On board Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s bus as he was attacked
Winning 14 of 17 seats is my target
Anumula Revanth Reddy is on a mission to demonstrate a democratic and egalitarian facet of power and leadership.
LOTUS TAKES ROOT
Buoyed by its slowly growing acceptance among the voters in Tamil Nadu, the BJP is mounting its fiercest offensive ever
BLANK CHECK
Several factors favour an increase in the BJP’s vote share in Kerala, but whether the party can win a seat remains uncertain
CONGRESS HAS A HISTORY OF MAKING ADJUSTMENTS WITH COMMUNAL FORCES
In April 2021, as Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was leading the CPI(M)’s assembly poll campaign to win a second consecutive term, a spirited debate erupted in Kerala over an epithet that party workers had bestowed on him.
POLL PLOT
Congress hopes its five guarantees’ will blunt BJP’s aggressive push
MODI'S GUARANTEES REMAIN IN SPEECHES, MY GUARANTEES ARE FULFILLED
The transformation is unmissable. The old-school mass leader Siddaramaiah has suddenly switched into the new avatar of a master strategist.