A few years ago, Priya Kansara was working in an ordinary office communications job for a healthcare pharmaceutical company. Now she’s fulfilling her childhood dream of being a leading actor, scaling buildings, learning jiu-jitsu and doing backflips in her latest film, Polite Society. With no previous stunt experience, Kansara describes the process as “jumping into the deep end”.
“The shooting schedule was so intense,” she says, recalling the third and final shot of one particular Friday evening. With 15 minutes left of the week’s filming, she was put in a harness and tasked with performing a major stunt. She remembers how worried everyone was on set that they wouldn’t get the shot in on time to enjoy a “stress-free weekend”. But, thankfully, Kansara executed the move flawlessly. “It was the best feeling ever – I could not believe I did it myself. Before they even yelled ‘CUT!’ I was already celebrating.”
Polite Society’s writer-director, Nida Manzoor, was so impressed she heralded Kansara “the next Tom Cruise” in a recent interview. When asked about being compared to the film star famous for doing his own stunts, Kansara mentions her close bond with Manzoor: “I feel very lucky knowing her, working with her; for her to call me [that] is pretty cool. Tom Cruise, step aside!”
Polite Society is an action comedy centred on British-Pakistani aspiring stuntwoman Ria Khan (played by Kansara). Manzoor – who also created We Are Lady Parts, the much-loved Channel 4 comedy about a punk band made up of Muslim women – here weaves an endearing story of sisterhood between Ria and her older sibling and mentor Lena, played by Ritu Arya. The pair’s relationship becomes strained when Lena decides to give up on her artistic dreams in favour of marrying eligible, charming bachelor Salim Shah (Akshay Khanna). Ria immediately casts Salim and his mother (Nimra Bucha) as villains in her own imagined superhero-style origin story and, with the help of two loyal school friends, plots to rescue Lena from her own wedding day.
The result is a visual treat, mixing south Asian aesthetics with east Asian martial arts. One scene involves Lena and Ria having to fight in fully embroidered anarkalis (long, traditional south Asian dresses) along with gold tikka (jewellery worn on the forehead). Arya says her wedding costume resembled heavy armour and just lifting her leg to kick was a workout.
Credit is due to costume designer PC Williams, “a complete visionary” who Kansara says was determined to get the costumes right in a way that enhanced the visual effects of the fight scenes, as opposed to holding the actors back. “It just feels more badass,” Kansara says. “Like, who doesn’t want to fight somebody at a Desi wedding? Haven’t we all wanted to kick an aunty in the face at one point?”
Aside from the fun of seeing a full-on martial arts fight break out immediately after a wedding dance sequence, much of the appeal of Polite Society is in the way it explodes stereotypes about south Asian women. With such little representation to go on, when south Asian women do make it on to the screen, they are often portrayed as submissive or weak. Ria and Lena are vocal, strong willed and independent: Ria fights bullies, goes off on misguided but well-intentioned schemes to “save” her sister, and never gives up on her dream of becoming a stuntwoman. Equally, Lena knows what she wants and makes her own decisions about her career and love life.
“Growing up, I didn’t see much representation on TV,” says Arya, who is best known for her role as Lila Pitts in Netflix fantasy drama The Umbrella Academy, and is soon to appear in the Barbie movie. “That [absence] was a big influence; [it] got me involved in having the confidence to speak up and perform. The main thing for me is just enjoyment, having fun, playing and creating. It means so much if I can touch one person to now have more of a voice, take up more space, if they felt how I felt growing up.”
Kansara echoes the sentiment. “We don’t see young, brown women own what they do,” she says. “We don’t see brown women step outside the ordinary and have this level of self-belief, have the spirit and passion. We’re not taught to embrace it.”
This representation is “not just for the young brown girls, but for all kids in general, and even adults”. Kansara herself is inspired by her character: “One of the things that I love so much about Ria is she doesn’t seek anybody else’s validation and she doesn’t care what anybody else thinks. The only thing that matters is that Ria believes in herself and that she knows what she loves. She is the main character in her story.”
Ria’s character is also a striking contrast to the “skewed” and “narrow” way that films often depict Muslims – a global population of more than a billion people. “We don’t see a lot of lighthearted Muslim stories,” Kansara says. “I cannot tell you how many times I’ve auditioned for things where people would ask: ‘Can you play a terrorist role?’ And it’s just, like, what century are we living in?” Instead, Kansara advocates for stories about the average family “that the majority of Muslim people can relate to”.
In 2017, actor Riz Ahmed made a speech about diversity in the House of Commons. It proved inspirational. In its wake, author and former English teacher Dr Sadia Habib and data analyst Shaf Choudry created the Riz test, a criterion to measure Muslim representation on screen that applies similar principles to the Bechdel test, which assesses female representation on film. If the film stars at least one identifiably Muslim character (by ethnicity, language or clothing) do they discuss, participate in or fall victim to terrorism? Are they irrationally angry? Are they superstitious, culturally backwards or anti-modern? Are they a threat to a western way of life or misogynistic or oppressed by male counterparts? If the answer for any of the above is “Yes”, the film fails the test. Polite Society passes the Riz test in all regards, which is a step forward in the industry.
The religious background of the characters in the film is largely implicit, rather than foregrounded. They drink and date. They may not be perfect Muslims, but Kansara stresses the importance of having a “full spectrum” of representation from the devout to the less religious. “As more and more people get to tell their stories, I think we’ll be able to tell the stories in between.”
Polite Society is also an ode to Britain and a celebration of the multicultural landscape of London, featuring the skylines of Canary Wharf and the O2. Many scenes take place at locations familiar to the British Desi community, including Shepherd’s Bush market and Battersea Arts Centre.
Ultimately, Kansara believes that this is a film dedicated to film lovers, with its nostalgic nods to 1970s kung fu movies as well as action classics Kill Bill, The Matrix and Rush Hour. Polite Society has touches of Scott Pilgrim in its exaggerated comic-book style too, and there are comparisons to be made with Ms Marvel, another Pakistani action hero (Bucha also stars as the villain in both).
“You feel really honoured to be compared to great shows and great directors – it’s fun to see yourself as part of this world,” Kansara says. “But also I think what’s really wonderful is that there is just so much originality to what Nida brings.”
Kansara’s first impression of the script was that it was “bonkers” and she remembers laughing out loud, having never read anything like it. But the message she hopes that the audience will take away is Ria’s tagline: “I am the fury.” It’s a self-affirmation that the character repeats to herself before she performs a stunt. “Everybody deserves to be able to say that to themselves, every day,” Kansara says. “To have that self-belief and just go for it.”
Polite Society is released on 28 April.
