Casting for change

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The 67th edition of the Emmy Awards, which recognises and honours excellence in primetime television, wrapped up last Sunday. I watched it , primarily to see if any of the shows I’d written about in this column would win an award – Wolf Hall , Brooklyn Nine-Nine , Better Call Saul and Empire, were all nominated, but unfortunately, none of them won.

The Emmys this year had its moments, but the most important of them was Viola Davis receiving the award for best lead actress in the drama series, How To Get Away With Murder . Davis is the first African-American woman to win this award, and she quoted Harriet Tubman, one of the most important African-American humanitarians who worked tirelessly for abolitionism during the American Civil War, in her emotional acceptance speech. “In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line, but I can’t seem to get there no-how. I can’t seem to get over that line.” Davis went on to say that the only thing separating women of colour was opportunity, and that you couldn’t win Emmy awards for roles that were “simply not there”.

Davis’ rousing speech comes at a time when Priyanka Chopra is poised to make a leap from Bollywood into American television, as the lead in

Quantico , a new series that premieres this weekend. Priyanka Chopra plays Alex Parrish, an FBI Agent who is half Indian and half Caucasian. Right from the time the news about Chopra’s new project came out, she raved in interviews about how this role was perfect, because it was the kind where her “Indian-ness” didn’t matter, and that it could’ve been played by any actress, irrespective of race. There are a number of actors in the industry, like Archie Panjabi, Mindy Kaling and Kal Penn to name a few, who are doing roles that have nothing to do with them being Indian, but the fact that this role landed with an Indian actress from India, and more specifically, Bollywood, isn’t something that happens often, or at all.

The trailer for

Quantico came out a good couple of months ago, and save for Chopra’s supposedly American accent, looked quite promising. The premise of the show is laid out in the trailer – Alex Parrish is a patriotic young FBI recruit with a mysterious past, and when 9/11 happens, she is named a chief suspect. Earlier this week, the first eight minutes of the pilot episode were “leaked”, and I managed to catch it before it was taken off the Internet again. These eight minutes give you a solid idea about the kind of person Alex Parish is – she’s strong, intelligent, sexually liberated and isn’t against the idea of getting it on with a random guy she sits next to on the plane. The actual sex “scene” though, is carefully shot — there’s no nudity, only a flash of a leg, and it’s mostly just sound; no doubt an effort made by Chopra to keep things as Sanskaari as possible.

It’s too soon to judge if Quantico will be a hit (there’s a lot of talk comparing it to Homeland , which I find ridiculous), or if it will change the way Indians are cast in American television. From what I saw of the show, it is not ground breaking, nor is it going to be the next big thing in American crime drama, but it was thoroughly entertaining, and that, is as good a start as any.