The Indians are coming! From Kunal Nayyar to Priyanka Chopra to Aziz Ansari, Gautam Chintamani explains how the golden age of Indian or even Asian portrayal on American television may have irrevocably arrived
In an episode of the television show Master of None titled ‘Indians on TV’, Aziz Ansari, the well-known American actor and comedian, who also happens to be the creator of the show, succinctly summed up the state of Asian actors on American television. In the episode Ansari, who plays an actor trying to get his own sitcom on network television, discovers that no network wants to see more than one Indian person on TV at a time for it might then, as the actor portraying the network executive points out, make the whole thing look like an Indian show, which would make it difficult for the more mainstream audience to relate to. Using his own personal experiences where he once refused to speak in the stereotypical Indian accent, Ansari via his character then argues with the executive that no one would think like that “about a show with two white people.”
Although there might be a great deal of statistical truth in Ansari’s argument, one look at network television in the US circa 2015 and you’d know that it has indeed come a long way. Fine, there might still not be a show with two Indian faces but many top drawing shows in the recent past have prominently featured Indians as their very face.
The true sign of the arrival of foreign actors isn’t mere presence in big-budget films or mainstream television shows. Rather it’s the ability to cast such actors in roles that wouldn’t require of them to be stereotypical and also be integral to the narrative. Take for instance the series Harold and Kumar featuring second generation Asian Americans — a Korean John Cho as Harold and an Indian Kal Penn. The first film, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), where the two, stoned out of their wits, get the munchies and embark on an adventure for White Castle burgers, as well as the two that followed might not rate high on critical acclaim but more than managed to knock the whole Asian stereotyping issue out of the park besides becoming a $100 million USD franchise. In the same light, Kunal Nayyar’s character Rajesh Koothrappali in the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory (2007) is one of the biggest endorsements of the shift in the way shows might be produced in the near future. The surprise hit is now in its ninth season and while co-stars Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki might be the show’s frontrunners, The Big Bang Theory would be unimaginable without Nayyar’s character and the fact that he and Simon Helberg, who plays Howard Wolowitz in the series, were the joint third highest TV earners with $ 20 million USD in 2015, just behind Parsons and Galecki, who raked in $ 29 and $ 27 million USD respectively, confirms it.
The last few years have been nothing less than extraordinary for Indians in US television history. A few years ago a role like the one played by Nayyar would have been difficult to imagine and Indian actors would have been relegated to playing South Asian parts like Nimrat Kaur and Suraj Sharma on Homeland (2014) where they played Pakistani characters or Archie Panjabi and her regular Kalinda Sharma on The Good Wife (2009) but 2015 has perhaps changed it finally. The advent of Aziz Ansari’s Master of None, where an Indian-American plays the lead in a show that doesn’t typify the ‘Indian’ character and the appearance of Priyanka Chopra as the face of Quantico (2015), a new thriller poised to return for a second season, have been two of the most prominent milestones in a year that has possibly redefined Asians on American television.
One of the major reasons for this shift could be the coming of age of not just the average audience, both American as well as global, but also the executives who would previously not think beyond the obvious. In a piece that he wrote for The New York Times at the end of the first season of Master of None, Ansari openly addressed Hollywood’s blatant race issue when it came to casting the lead for most shows by pointing out that the industry largely casts straight white actors even though 40 per cent of the American population comprised of minorities. In a little under a decade, Ansari’s career has gone from him being a blip on the radar of majority all-white alternative comedy scene in New York to being the star of his own racially diverse series and considering the opposition, this is no mean feat.
But irrespective of this, his has been a somewhat obvious trajectory keeping in mind how Ansari has previously enjoyed an immensely popular run as Tom Haverford on the hit series Parks and Recreation (2009) alongside his comedy specials and that somewhere enhances Priyanka Chopra’s American television debut. In a role that was originally developed for a male actor, Chopra not only stood out but also became the focal point of Quantico right at the initial stages.
Her accent might not have impressed the critics but most still found her presence alluring to the extent of calling her one of the 12 breakthrough characters of the year and the audiences simply adored her as well. Chopra also earned the distinction of being the first south Asian to win the People’s Choice Award in the Favorite Actress in A New TV Series category. Priyanka Chopra and Aziz Ansari’s popularity, acceptance as well as stature to headline shows along with Daniel Dae Kim on Hawaii Five-0 (2010), Daniel Wu on Into the Badlands (2015) and Steven Yuen on The Walking Dead (2015) and shows like Fresh Off the Boat (2015), featuring a Taiwanese family making their way in America during the 1990s and Dr Ken (2015), about a Korean doctor who balances work and family life, has proved one thing that the golden age of three-dimensional Indian or even Asian portrayal on American television may have irrevocably arrived.
Unlike India where television is still considered film’s distant cousin, the US has always had a bustling television industry. Many trailblazers of the New Hollywood of the 1960s and 1970s such as Sidney lumet, John Frankenheimer, and Robert Altman began in television and big stars of the day readily accepted television work.
Although one might want to think that the Asian or non-white presence in mainstream network television in the US is a recent phenomenon but, in fact, this trend has been brewing since the 1950s. Considered to be the first golden era of television, the 1950s had the Chinese American silent and talkie film star Anna May Wong playing the lead in The Gallery of Madame liu-Tsong (1951). May Wong played a detective in a role that was specifically written for her and this was the first US television series that starred an Asian American as the lead. Before Bruce lee became a global icon with his kung fu films he, too, featured as Kato, the masked sidekick in The Green Hornet (1966). later George Takei became famous by playing Sulu on Star Trek (1966) and the 1970s saw Pat Morita, who attained global fame as Mr Miyagi in The Karate Kid (1984), feature in Happy Days (1975).
Morita was also one-half of Mr T and Tina (1976), the first American sitcom that revolved around a person of Asian decent. Although some of these roles were well etched, they were largely seen as exotic and barely went beyond the perfunctory, which could be the reason that Indians found the going difficult on American network television or even mainstream Hollywood.
For the world, the ‘Indian’ stereotype was still confined to the Raj and perhaps that could be the reason why Indian actors found more work in British or European television. While the Chinese and Japanese were filling the so-called exotic need in American television, it was the Indians who were doing the same across the Atlantic. Having earned the honour of being one of the first Asians to travel the US with a Shakespeare company, Saeed Jaffrey had also broken new ground on Broadway where he appeared in the 1958 adaptation of a Passage to India but continued to remain constricted to television after he shifted to England.
Across the 1960s and 1970s, Jaffrey was a regular face on British television and continued to be the first choice when it came to someone playing an Indian. One would have imagined that Jaffrey’s popularity along with the huge Indian diaspora in the UK would have inspired someone to come up with a show centered on Indians that went beyond the stereotypical as seen on shows such as A Passage to India (1965), Crown Court (1975), Jewel in the Crown (1984), or The Far Pavilions (1984) but it’d be the mid-1980s by the time British television came around in this respect with Tandoori Nights (1985). The time when Jaffrey was living it up on British television, Kabir Bedi’s foray into Italian television in the miniseries Sandokan (1976) catapulted him to international acclaim. Bedi played the exotic offering in the form of an Indian prince who led a den of pirates that took on the British Army in the early 19th century and went on to feature in some of the most popular TV shows such as Dynasty (1982), Knight Rider (1985), General Hospital (1983) and Magnum PI (1988) to name a few and in some cases such as One life to live (1986) and Magnum PI he also played non-Indian characters.
The small strides of Asian actors trying to feature as mainstream characters on network television got a huge thrust on two occasions — one in the mid-1990s and the other in the new millennium. The first real change in the onscreen portrayal of Asians for the present generation came in 1994 when Margaret Cho, a Korean-American comedian and actress, featured as the lead in her own show called All American Girl.
Showcasing the cultural and familial issues of a Korean family in San Francisco the show was supposed to usher in a new phase but the ill-fated sitcom was canceled after just one season. The confusion of breaking new territory vis-à-vis the racial barrier, Cho’s own Asian American roots and the demands of network television in terms of commercial feasibility diluted the impact and resulted in poor audience reception. It is said that Cho suffered a breakdown because of the intense scrutiny of being one of the first to cross over in real terms and also, self-disappointment although many felt that had she been allowed to use her own material more freely the result would have been different. Between All American Girl and the turn of the century, Asians were once again seen as window dressing and what could be a bigger testimony of this than the fact that a racist caricature of an Indian character in the form of Apu on The Simpsons (1989) went on to became one of the most recognisable Indian-Americans.
loosely based on the character Hrundi V Bakshi that Peter Sellers played in The Party (1968) and brought to life by the vocal talent of Hank Azaria, Apu is extremely inappropriate and much to the chagrin of Indian Americans, is thoroughly enjoyable which explains why this tertiary character went on to become one of the most well-liked cast members of the long-running show. The focus from the stereotypes associated with Asians began to shift once lucy liu got a major role on Ally McBeal (1998) and a few years later when Parminder Nagra of Bend It like Beckham (2002) fame joined the cast of ER (2003) it laid the foundation of the second innings for Asian and especially Indian faces on popular American television.
The renewed Western interest in cinema as well as artists from developing or third world countries in the late 1990s that led to the discovery of a Wong Kar-wai (Chunking Express, 1994), In the Mood for love (2000), and Ang lee, the Taiwanese-born American film writer who directed one of the best recent big screen adaptations of Jane Austen’s works, Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth, 1998) had come to a pass and the result was the sudden onslaught of non-traditional faces in central roles across network television. One of the best examples of said Asian proliferation could be seen in lost (2004) that featured Koreans such as Yunjin Kim and Daniel Dae Kim and an Indian, Naveen Andrews, who played an Iranian. The show’s creators Jeffrey lieber, JJ Abrams and Damon lindelof were so impressed by Yunjin Kim’s audition for the role that was eventually played by Evangeline lily that they wrote a special track for her and through the course of the show both the Yunjin and Daniel Dae Kim, as well as Andrews, had extended back stories.
Alongside lost the other big development of the early 2000s was the emergence of Mindy Kaling on the American version of The Office (2005) where besides playing a recurring character, Kaling also served as an executive producer, writer as well as director. Born Vera Chokalingam to Indian parents in Nigeria, the actress has always been known as Mindy, a name that met her mother’s need of being a ‘cute American name’ as they had already decided to shift to the United States, and changed her surname to Kaling as none of the announcers during her stand-up days could get Chokalingam right.
One of the brightest sparks on The Office, Mindy was the only woman among the show’s staff of eight writers and later created her own show, The Mindy Project that followed an obstetrician/gynecologist played by Kaling herself in her quest to balance personal and professional life in a small New York City medical practice. The show that lasted three seasons on Fox before enjoying a fourth on Hulu was one of the best-reviewed shows on Metacritic in 2012 and Kaling was also voted as one of the “50 Coolest and Most Creative Entertainers” in Hollywood in 2013 besides making it to Time’s list of 100 most influential people in the world for the same year.
Following the success of lost and the arrival of a Mindy Kaling, the presence of an Indian in shows that asked for a global cast was almost a given and this could be seen via a Sendhil Ramamurthy in Heroes (2006). The show’s concept hovered around the idea of a “large ensemble saga” that would connect with the audience and Ramamurthy’s character, Mohinder Suresh, a research geneticist exploring the biological source of the superhuman powers of the show’s lead characters, conveyed the interest of network’s to include Indians in characters that would previously be imagined as Chinese or Japanese characters.
-- Chintamani is the author of the best-selling Dark Star: The loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna I Tweet to him @gchintamani
Indian Exports
Suraj Sharma: He played Pi in the Oscar-nominated life of Pi and was born and brought up in New Delhi. Originally from Kerala, his father, Gokul Churai, is a software engineer and his mother, Shailaja, is an economist. Suraj, who attended Sardar Patel Vidyalaya in Delhi, appeared last year on the fourth season of Homeland (same season as Nimrat Kaur) where he played Ayaan Ibrahim. After life of Pi, he had returned to complete his graduation in Philosophy from St Stephen’s College, DU
Kunal Nayyar: Kunal was born in london but he grew up in New Delhi, where he studied in St Columba’s. One of the four lead characters in The Big Bang Theory, the show is unimaginable without him
Rahul Khanna: Rahul Khanna’s appearances on screen may not be as frequent as we’d like but currently he is earning accolades playing Yousaf Rana, an officer in the ISI on The Americans
The Firang Desis
Archie Panjabi: She plays Kalinda Sharma, the eccentric private investigator for the law firm lockhert & Gardner, on The Good Wife. Archie was born in london to Sindhi parents who immigrated from India
Hannah Simone: Much loved as the gorgeous Cecelia Parekh on New Girl, Hannah Simone was born in london, to an Indian father and an English mother of German, Italian, and Greek Cypriot descent. While growing up, she moved from one continent to another. At 16, she attended the American Embassy School, Delhi
Anita Devi Mahendru: Better known as Annet Mahendru, she is an Afghan-born Russian–Indian-American actress, best known for her role as Nina Sergeevna Krilova on the FX series The Americans
Noureen Ahmed: She played lacy on Anger Management. She was born in New York to Indian Gujarati Muslim parents from Pune and can speak fluent Hindi and Gujarati
Heading West
The actors’ transition from the East to the West has went through a lot of professional training, patience and hard work as well. Priyanka Chopra had mentioned in an interview with a daily, “My character demanded that I have an American accent, a little bit more than my natural one! I was going schizophrenic because I was doing Marathi dialect training for my role as Kashibai in Bajirao Mastani and American dialect training simultaneously”.
Kunal Nayyar and Nimrat Kaur, on the other hand, didn’t need to undergo such crucial changes. The former had said, “My pure Delhi, St Columba’s School accent is real and not something I consciously practise to sound more “Indian” or to make fun of Indian accents — like, say, the Apu character (The Simpsons). I’m proud of my culture; I wear it on my sleeve”.
“I auditioned for Homeland and then moved on. There was no plan to sit and wait for another potentially global project to fall into my lap”, Nimrat Kaur had mentioned about her stint on Homeland
Rewards & Awards
The reception that the Indian actors have received on American television has been inspiring.
Priyanka won the People’s Choice awards this year for Quantico, Kunal’s The Big Bang Theory is an Emmy winning show that was nominated last year yet again for the Emmy for an ensemble cast, Archie Panjabi’s portrayal of Kalinda Sharma not only won her an Emmy but also a massive fan following. Slumdog Millionaire fame Dev Patel was a part of the main cast of the entertaining show The Newsroom. late actor Saeed Jaffrey’s daughter Sakina Jaffrey played linda Vasquez on House of Cards.
Among others, Sarita Choudhury (Mira on Homeland) is half-Bengali and half-English and Maulik Pancholy’s (30 Rock) parents migrated from Gujarat to the US. Also, Hannah Simone was featured in Gillette’s ‘What Women Want’ campaign along with Kate Upton and Génesis Rodríguez. And in 2013, Mindy Kaling was recognised by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world
