EXCLUSIVE: Charithra Chandran, who made her breakthrough as Edwina Sharma in the hit Netflix series Regal Bridgerton, has spoken out against the entertainment industry’s mentality, which she says pits people of color against each other.
Chandran, who spoke to Deadline in the days before wrapping her first West End play, said she “never imagined herself as a role model” but “a lot of young girls follow me on social media, so I feel like that I am a role model.” Responsibility.”
Actors incl Slumdog Millionaire Star Dev Patel, Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Melissa Fumero and Aubrey Plaza have spoken in the past about providing limited spaces for people of color in television and films.
For Chandran, this mentality is intentionally propagated by industry gatekeepers to pit people of color against each other. “It’s not a zero-sum game,” she said. “You are so focused on fighting your own that you become distracted by the people who are perpetrating the oppression. The oppressors have enforced the idea that there is only one seat at the table while other people of color just pull up more chairs.”
Since becoming famous, Chandran has chosen to speak about colorism and the importance of diversity on several occasions. “I think that’s the burden of representation, right?” she added. “It is so rare that you are expected to represent everyone in your community and not just be an individual. The goal is for the representation to be so nuanced and so consistent that no single representation carries that burden, but even though I have it, it’s a really important responsibility that I take seriously.”
Chandran first appeared on the screens in Prime Video’s spy series Alex Rider and really established herself in Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton, plays the younger sister of Simone Ashley’s Kate Sharma. This year is set to be a very special one for the 27-year-old actress, who was born in Scotland to Tamil-Indian parents. As she chats with Deadline, she’s set to shoot an unknown film the next day and is in pre-production for her associate producing debut. Song of the Sun Goda TV series that she will also star in and is currently being completed Guide to Teenage Armageddon in the West End.
She said that theater acting was “the most fun I’ve ever had”, a “rewarding and challenging experience” that took her back to her time performing at Oxford University.
“We are introducing a new generation”
Charithra Chandran at the opening night of “Instructions for a Teenage Armageddon”
Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty Images
Unlike the Polaroids and doodles on the billboard and a pastel pink bedroom set, the one-woman Guide to Teenage Armageddon is an open-ended story of grief surrounding Chandran’s funny teenage character, whose sister died in a darkly comic accident involving a Yorkshire pudding. The play is based on author Rosie Day’s one-woman show of the same name and is in partnership with teen mental health charity stem4, of which Day is an ambassador.
Tickets for the play, which ends on Sunday, started at £15 ($18.80), an unusually low price for the West End, and Chandran reveals this was a conscious decision by the producers to attract a more diverse audience. “The average theatergoer in this country is probably old, white and upper middle class, and we wanted to deflect that to educate a new generation about the value of theater.”
This month also saw the premiere of Chandran’s first-ever film role: Prime Video How to Date Billy Walshin which she stars alongside Tanner Buchanan Heart stopper Star Sebastian Croft. For Chandran, her first leading role in a leading role was a defining moment in her career. “I learned so much from this film about the leadership aspect of being at the top of the list and it will always be close to my heart because it was my first film ever,” she said excitedly. “I think the older I get, the fewer opportunities there are to act and make a film like this [in which she plays a teenager]During the promotions, Chandran posted on Instagram that she and Croft had unknowingly shared the stage in a production of as children Chitty Chitty Bang Banga moment she described as “crazy, crazy synchronicity.”
Chandran seems to have a fondness for the word “synchronicity” and uses it again when describing how she got into the TV adaptation of Shankari Chandran Song of the Sun God, a TV series from who other than Synchronicity Films, which will be her first project as an associate producer. Her association with the show – which is set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War – began with an interview with Teen Vogue in which she mentioned that her dream project would be “something about the crisis in Sri Lanka with the Tamil population.” The interview was read by the daughter of Olivia Hetreed, who was writing the series at the time, and the two quickly got in touch.
“We realized we were so confident in what we wanted from this project,” said Chandran, who is herself a Tamil. “Even the fact that Shankari and I have the same last name was by design.”