Meera Syal: 'I am now a Triple Bad Bet – Old, Female and Brown!'
About this episode
Meera Syal discusses her life, career, and the challenges of being an older woman of color in the entertainment industry.
My guest this week is the actor, playwright, screenwriter, novelist and multi-award winner Dame Meera Syal. Most of us have those people we grow up alongside and it feels like Meera has always been a fixture in my life, ever since I first saw her in the 80s film, Sammi and Rosie Get Laid. She’s been writing, performing and breaking new ground ever since and now in her early 60s she still is. In the early 90s she wrote the brilliant film Bhaji on the Beach, co-wrote and starred in the utterly groundbreaking Goodness Gracious Me and gave us the unforgettable character, Ummi, in the Kumars at Number 42. She’s hardly been off our screens and stages ever since. She’s also written three novels - including Anita and Me which she turned into films. She’s won Emmys - two I think - been awarded a BAFTA fellowship, a CBE, an MBE and now a damehood. Now she’s looking back over her life in her first memoir, which I have to say, has the best title ever, Vigilauntie. Meera joined me to talk about growing up Brown in the 70s and wearing the wobbly crown of the good girl while feeling driven to be a bad one. We discussed the wasted potential of older women, writing to survive, the battle to…
Topics covered
- identity
- gender
- ageism
- memoir
- cultural representation
- women in media
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