Amrit Kaur and Bela Malhotra, her character on Sex Lives of College Girls, share a common origin story: their parents wanted them to go into neuroscience. Of course, life had other plans for both.
“When I first told my parents I wanted to go to theater school I wasn’t brave enough to do it myself,” Kaur tells me. But like Bela, Kaur dreamed of being an entertainer—and had the ambition and drive to make it happen. (In the new season of Sex Lives of College Girls, now streaming on HBO Max, a character calls Bela “pathologically confident.” It’s a compliment.) So she negotiated with her parents to pay for improv classes.
The investment certainly paid off: In an ensemble cast full of dynamic stars that includes Reneé Rapp, Pauline Chalamet, and Alyah Chanelle Scott, Kaur is a standout. If Sex Lives creator Mindy Kaling gets anything, it’s how to cast people the audience can and will fall in love with. Kaur is no exception to that rule.
But like so many children of immigrant parents, and specifically those of South Asian backgrounds, myself included, Kaur didn’t grow up seeing much representation on screen. As much as we love rom-coms like Never Been Kissed, She’s All That, or You’ve Got Mail, it’s no secret that they lack diversity. But that’s been changing in recent years, and Kaur is doing her part in shoving old stereotypes out the door. In Sex Lives, Bela takes on the comedic patriarchy and tricky roommate dynamics all while relentlessly getting her flirt on. Bela is sex positive, ambitious, and unconcerned about labels or being perceived as outside of the box—an unapologetic force not typically seen in female characters in pop culture, no matter her background.
“If there’s a stereotype to break, I have always been excited to break it,” Kaur says. “I think that’s my job.” She’s also not afraid to engage in tough conversations in her own home (what the aunties think be damned). On and off screen, Kaur is changing the narrative and maintaining her culture in the same beat. Like she said in our conversation, she was born for this.
Glamour: Let’s just jump into this, how did you get into acting?
Amrit Kaur: Oh god, I mean, I think you are sort of born a drama queen or you're not. When my sister and I were younger, we would have these Bollywood songs on our 1990s TV and our parents would be like, “OK, go dance to this.” That's when it began: the entertainer. I’ve always been the person who entertains and wants to make people happy because I think there is so much sadness and grief in the world.
I didn’t take any acting classes when I was a kid, but I negotiated with my parents to take improv [as I got older], so I did that. I kind of manipulated them into thinking that I could become a doctor if they let me study theater in college because I would get really high grades. Little did I know that acting school was going to be very hard.
I studied theater in college too. I really get it. Since you loved performing at a young age, were there any actors you looked up to?
So many. Growing up I really liked Amir Khan. As I studied theater and acting, I became enamored with Irrfan Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. In Hollywood I love Adam Driver. I am obsessed with him, Olivia Coleman, Meryl Streep, Viola Davis… I very much admire Adam Driver’s career and how he’s always been an anomaly and not afraid of that. His work in Girls was so brave. He just revealed so much about humanity, so I look up to him and his career trajectory a lot.
How did your parents react when you pursued acting professionally? Is anyone still holding out that you’ll apply to med school?
Ha! No, no one is still holding out. When I first told my parents I wanted to go to theater school I wasn’t brave enough to do it myself. I have a sister who is seven years older who always took the mediator stance. She was headed to her flight to go to med school, actually. At the airport I was like, “Jasmine, we have to have the conversation right now. We have to tell Dad I’m not going to go into neuroscience, I am going to go to theater school.” So she had the conversation on my behalf.
What has happened with my parents is, I've approached acting the same way a professional would approach any degree, whether it be law, medicine, or engineering. I study many hours a week. I just came back from Italy studying five days a week, eight hours a day for a month and a half. I study every Sunday. I continue to study just as any professional would. So when they saw that and began to understand the intelligence, discipline, and etiquette required to become an actor they didn’t question me anymore. They just didn’t know.
That’s a really great sister you’ve got there. Let’s talk about the show. Your character Bela is, I think, a one-woman sexual revolution. How did you tap into that?
My approach to acting is that every character is in me, they just have different qualities at different degrees. So those qualities of Bela—she’s a boss lady, she’s competitive, she’s sexual—all of those things in myself I hyped up.
I did a lot of research on Mindy Kaling and watched a lot of standup comedians. I started to do standup sets just to get into the mindset of what it’s like to be a character who’s trying to think about being funny all the time. I wanted to know, what is the science of making a joke? I by no means am good at it, but Bela isn’t either. She’s trying to figure it out. Half of the time she’s saying shit and people are like, “What are you saying?” With time, as I tap into a character, I sort of become that entity for six months. I’m just coming back to myself.
I did animal work, too. I was working on a horse. There's a technique in acting where you work on an animal that you think resonates with your character. I think she’s so in her hips, and horses walk with their bums a lot. I don't know if that was too much information… [Laughs]
Seeing sexually expressive South Asian women, let alone them be the object of desire, is relatively new territory to the western masses on screen. Do you feel this new area representation will make an impact?
Absolutely. I think Hollywood is behind. I look at Indian cinema and there's so much there that’s not shying away from that subject, but in Hollywood we could have more representation. I think Bela is one of those representations, but it’s also sad that we still have this question of, “Will it be impactful?” The South Asian population is what…1/6th of the entire world? We are behind in having so much more representation. There are so many cultures within South Asian culture. Bela just represents one aspect, one character, as an Indo American. She doesn’t represent the entire community. That's where it gets dangerous because then you get, ”Oh, she represents everyone.” But she is definitely telling the story of Indo Americans that are exploring their sexuality, that don't care about labels, that are outside of the box. She's definitely spearheading that voice. And not just for Indo Americans—for people.
Speaking of spicier material, just brown girl to fellow brown girl, did you ever wonder, “what will my aunties think” when you signed onto this project?
[Laughs] “Log kya kahenge?” [Ed note: Hindi for, What will people say?] The ultimate question. I didn't. If there’s a stereotype to break, I have always been excited to break it. I think that’s my job. It’s my job to say, “I'm human, there's no one box I should fit into.” Whatever stereotype you think I am, I am not just that. So as an actor, I feel very grateful and excited to do that.
My family on the other hand…not so much. My father comes from a small village in Hoshiarpur where they fully cover, wear long-sleeve shirts, cover their heads, don't speak to male cousins. It’s a very reserved background. For him it was a little bit scarier. In the process of me doing this we were forced to have so many conversations about Bela and what she was representing and my personal experiences intertwined with Bela’s. We talked about how things could have been different in my own childhood with the understanding of sexuality and fear around it. As a result of being cast and blessed by this character I've been able to have very groundbreaking conversations with a father who is from a small village. And I am hearing from other friends who are not just South Asian but have immigrant parents and not just those with immigrant parents…a lot of women in general are having conversations with their parents about breaking norms if they’ve been caught up in stereotypes.
There's a throughline on the show about comedy being a boys club even at a college level. Do you feel that’s changing?
I think it is changing. I am still not as well versed in the comedy scene as I would like to be, but it is definitely changing. Mindy has done such an incredible thing for South Asians and South Asian Americans. I see more female comedians when I go to stand up clubs, and I see so many South Asian comedians and people with immigrant backgrounds. I see that people are craving to see representation in comedy, in acting, in books—any type of media. We want to see ourselves on the screen. We relate to comedians who share our stories, and I think Bela is very relatable in that sense.
Sex Lives showcases all different types of feminism and how dynamic it can be. Who is your feminist icon?
I have a teacher who has been absolutely incredible. Her name is Michele Lonsdale Smith. She’s always been about teaching women how to be big and bold in a society where there are so many ways to be oppressed and to be a person who is in service for humanity. I think that is the most womanly thing you can do. I have learned that from my mother—from all my mother figures. She is someone who has taught me to strive to be a better version of myself.
Other than that, the traditional ones: Amal Clooney, Malala Yousefzai, Greta Thurnberg…all these people who have been in service to humanity, people who have been using their platform for greater good. My dream is that my platform can grow so that one day I can make an all-female school in the village my family is from. There's still a lot of women that get married early, don’t get educated, or aren't able to continue their education in a way that we should all be allowed to. I hope my platform will hopefully give me the opportunity to help people where I’m from.
Who are you watching your season two premiere with, and how are you celebrating?
The honest answer is I probably won't watch it until the beginning of next year. I’m shooting a movie right now, so I am very much focused on that character. I am going to Pakistan in a week to shoot her, which is when the show premieres.
Manasa Vedula is a writer and social media strategist based in New York City.
