Nida Man­zoor: ​‘As South Asian women, we don’t get to rage’

Nida Man­zoor, tak­ing bites of a sug­ar-dust­ed cook­ie in a swanky Soho hotel, polite­ly fudges the F‑word. The only time she goes the full F‑U-C‑K is when scold­ing her­self for being a South Asian good-girl. She’s liv­ing the social ten­sion around pleas­ing oth­ers that’s esca­lat­ed to bizarre pro­por­tions in her debut fea­ture com­e­dy, Polite Soci­ety. ​“Bis­cuits are nice!” is how Ria (Priya Kansara), the hero­ine, dis­miss­es Saleem, the ​“nice”, ​“hot­ter than God” geneti­cist-doc­tor with das­tard­ly nup­tial plans on Lena (Ritu Arya), her sis­ter. Nice­ness, in Polite Soci­ety, is evil.

For­tu­nate­ly, life doesn’t always imi­tate art, because Man­zoor, clean-faced but for winged black eye­lin­er, is adorable. The sis­ter­ly naugh­ti­ness of her smash-hit series We Are Lady Parts is in evi­dence, as we bond over trashy films and a desire to see men­stru­al blood on screen – Man­zoor punc­tu­at­ing her enthu­si­asm with kit­ten­ish growls (“Ugh, the peri­od scene in Sou­venir II, is it every­thing?”) and dain­ty thwacks of the table.

As with Bridger­ton, the iron­ic peri­od dra­ma that’s as addic­tive as a box of mac­a­roons, Manzoor’s invet­er­ate good man­ners enables her to put a zip­py spin on gen­er­a­tional repres­sions. You can see why attempts to write work­ing class stereo­types for Eas­t­en­ders col­lapsed beneath flights of silli­ness, and why her cos­tume detail for the first Black Doc­tor Who was so exact­ing. The zingy lemon and rasp­ber­ry pink sur­faces of Polite Soci­ety erupt with woman-on-woman car­toon­ish vio­lence. Its gonzo, bathet­ic ener­gy is off­set by the tox­ic fem­i­nin­i­ty of its queen bee, Raheela (Nim­ra Bucha), in her coiffed-to-a-scythe’s‑edge mane of curls, who is forced to live through her Oedi­pal son.

LWLies: You were in Sin­ga­pore till the age of 10. It always struck me as a very sani­tised and order­ly place. What was it like com­ing to London

Man­zoor: I went to an all-girl’s school, near Shepherd’s Bush Mar­ket. It was in Lon­don that I felt the divides, where hier­ar­chy and stra­ta real­ly hit me. I expe­ri­enced bul­ly­ing in snide ways. As girls and women, a com­ment about your hair, your dad doesn’t love you – they hurt. I remem­ber fight­ing in a karate class, girls watch­ing. The pain of the wood­en floor against my face, that was one thing, but the girls laugh­ing at me, that real­ly cut. I want­ed to make an action film that jux­ta­pos­es big, bom­bas­tic vio­lence with
these small violences.

How did you nav­i­gate the tone of Polite Soci­ety? It’s like a punky, play­ful Bol­ly­wood remix of a Jane Austen com­e­dy – but with quite heavy content.

Tone is every­thing, my favourite thing to mess with. I worked with so many script edi­tors, had audi­ence screen­ings but mak­ing We Are Lady Parts allowed me to find my joy. Before that, I was being asked to write dra­mas about hon­our killings, the strug­gles of being a Mus­lim woman. I was angry. I was like, ​‘I’m going to cre­ate some­thing that’s so me: music, punk, com­e­dy, write songs for my sib­lings, Mus­lim women, being weird.’ And… Oh, that worked! Polite Soci­ety took over 10 years to make. I got so many notes. Even as we got the green light, I had so much self-doubt, like, this film is no good. I was told it doesn’t work by so many high-lev­el Execs. It wasn’t till WALP was a suc­cess that, all of a sud­den, it’s good? That made me think, I’ve got to trust myself.

We spent ages in the edit, get­ting the first 10 min­utes right, like what is this? It’s a reflec­tion of Ria, wild, over-the-top, a movie that she would have made. It’s like I co-wrote this film with my younger self. It’s a trib­ute to my DP, Ash­ley [Con­nor], the slight­ly unhinged move­ment to the cam­era because it’s a teenage girl’s film: you feel you have to hold on! Talk­ing about films we like, we set­tled on Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance tril­o­gy – slick and styl­ized but fizzing.

Sex before mar­riage, drink­ing alco­hol, it’s not what every Mus­lim woman does, but it hap­pens, in real life. What were your feel­ings about rep­re­sent­ing that?

I want to show my char­ac­ters trans­gress­ing, not shame women who do that. A char­ac­ter like Lena, she would drink. It felt true to her. Grow­ing up, you had to hide these aspects of your­self, these ele­ments of what makes you a good Mus­lim or not.

The sis­ters attend a hus­band-hunt­ing ball in a man­sion. There’s a ​‘Northang­er Abbey’ moment where Ria delves into the secrets of the house. Did you read Jane Austen grow­ing up?

So much Jane Austen. She’s an influ­ence that I didn’t see. ​‘Northang­er Abbey’ was one of the first I read. But also the Bron­tës. ​‘Wuther­ing Heights’! Grrr! Just, like, man­sions and weird shit.

Watch­ing Raheela and her grand house, I won­dered, are we South Asian women doomed to repeat the sins of our moth­ers? Austen’s books are about trapped women who pluck­i­ly nav­i­gate a barbed social struc­ture. I saw our moth­ers and aunts do that.

Yep. The rea­son it’s there in the film is that it’s still real for me. With my mum and my mum’s friends, we, her chil­dren, had to look good. It was a pres­sure on her. That’s still true for me.

Did you grow up being told that, as a brown woman in a white world, you have to be bet­ter than every­body else? And did it work?

Whoof. Yeah. Prob­a­bly. But not to the ben­e­fit of my men­tal health. I’m hav­ing to rewire myself now! For me to make a good film, I sac­ri­fice every­thing to the altar of my work. I was hard­wired with: ​‘You need to work hard­er, bet­ter, stronger, longer than any­one else.’ I was talk­ing to a writer friend, Ramy [Youssef, of the com­e­dy show, Ramy], and he’s like, ​‘We got here through that! We’re in!’ I was like: ​‘No, I’m not in, yet, I got­ta keep that 100,000 per cent thing.’

I see per­fect, ​‘grace­ful’ brown fem­i­nin­i­ty as the flip side of shame inher­it­ed from colo­nial­ism. The com­ic-strip ener­gy of your work, the very form of this film, is that a way to push back on that?

That’s so inter­est­ing. I see myself, some­times, per­form­ing a kind of woman who’s per­fect. When I meet some­one for the first time, doing press inter­views (not with you, because you’re cool), I’ll be sat up straight, smil­ing like crazy. And I’m think­ing, ​‘Stop fuck­ing smil­ing. Men in inter­views, they’re not always smil­ing, why are you like that?’

But when it comes to my work, I’m break­ing that. Com­e­dy is low art. It’s where I get to be free. If I want­ed to be the good girl, I’d be doing great-ass dra­mas, the kind of film the BFI would wan­na make. But I get to have fights, write dia­logue for an actor like Nim­ra , make her a moth­er­fuck­er. Schlock! I love Paul Ver­ho­even, John Waters… Jane Austen, yes, but I like over-the-top trashi­ness. Is it bad writ­ing? Pos­si­bly. Yay! I want­ed it to be absurd, silly.

How know­ing­ly camp were you, in mak­ing this film? To be hon­est, I dread an Asian film about an arranged wed­ding. It’s some­thing white ori­en­tal­ists like brown women to write about. It can stray into what I call Spicy Man­go Exoti­cism, jol­ly, cosy.

Spicy Man­go ter­ri­to­ry, ugh, I hear you. I love camp. I grew up going to the cin­e­ma with my mum, see­ing Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and Dev­das (2002). F’king beau­ti­ful. The craft of those Bol­ly­wood films… I love that. I want to remix it. Homage it. I was like, grrr, I want­ed to see some­one tying some­one up in dupat­tas. Reser­voir Dogs meets Bol­ly­wood. When you see desis on screen, too often it’s clash­ing colours, ugly. But Lena in her wed­ding dress is god­damn beau­ti­ful, in a Bol­ly­wood way, not the West­ern ver­sion of ​‘Asian’. The right side of camp, cool, not gross. It took me ages to come round to Raheela’s hot pink pantsuit. Like, is it Spicy Man­go? And P.C. Williams, my cos­tume design­er was like, ​‘No, she’s an icon­ic vil­lain, in pink with red, f ​’k‑off boots.’

Yes, let’s talk about Raheela. There’s a sub­text, made clear in the plot, that her pam­pered exis­tence is a tor­ture. She’s like a hot-pink Darth Vad­er, in a cloak, storm­ing the mansion’s cor­ri­dors, force-choking…

Yass, the cloak! Oh my god, so much fun. It comes from a truth, too. We’ve encoun­tered women like this in our com­mu­ni­ty, not able to fol­low their pas­sions or dreams. There’s a real, jus­ti­fied anger. It’s hid­den behind smiles and great hair.

A tox­ic, hyper-fem­i­nin­i­ty, which we are often encour­aged to perform.

Hyper-fem­i­nine, but dark. There’s some­thing f ​’kin’ cool about it, too. I love an angry woman. Again, as South Asian women, we don’t get to rage. To let her be rage-ful, venge­ful – hon­est­ly, it was free­ing. And Nim­ra [the actor play­ing Raheela] is sexy. She brought it. Ria and Raheela were like two sides of one woman. To see the light fem­i­nine and dark fem­i­nine bat­tle it
out… It’s every­thing, everything!

Do you feel like our glow-up fem­i­nism, right now, the kind expressed by Lit­tle Simz and Liz­zo – when you glow, I glow – is at odds with the so-called post-fem­i­nism of the ​’80s and ​’90s, seen in the com­pet­i­tive, per­for­ma­tive old­er women of this film?

Yes, the aun­ties have to fight it out, where­as this gen­er­a­tion is more about togeth­er­ness: with­out you, I can’t suc­ceed. I want­ed it to be a love sto­ry between two sis­ters. When do you get to see two women who love each oth­er like that? Peo­ple assume they must be gay, as if there’s no oth­er kind of love between women.

There was no encour­age­ment for cre­ativ­i­ty in my par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion. My broth­er and sis­ter gave that to me. I have ben­e­fit­ted from that sense of sis­ter­hood with oth­er cre­atives from a sim­i­lar back­ground. But I loved direct­ing the scene where the sis­ters fight. It was cathar­tic. My sis­ter and I, when we fight, I want to kill her! When you fight with your clos­est friend, the pain is acute. I was like, this fight needs to be the most vio­lent. Trash every­thing! A female expe­ri­ence of vio­lence, writ large through the action genre.

There’s a Bol­ly­wood dance scene. It’s Dev­das, but with dag­ger eyes and pis­tol fin­gers. Does Ria rewatch these movies at home and do the dance moves? Because we’ve all done that.

Oh yeah, I was that girl who would do the moves at every wed­ding. I danced [in the last few years] at a friend’s wed­ding to ​‘Desi Girl’ from Dostana. [Sings] ​‘My desi girl, my desi girl…’ – do you remem­ber that one? Ria’s using this Mad­huri Dix­it moment to bring in her Kung Fu. I told the chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, it should have the play­ful­ness of a teenag­er. We cast young kids, not a pro­fes­sion­al dance troupe. It had to be fil­tered through the char­ac­ter, but a wow moment, not just silly.

Yet this film is on the side of the drop-outs. And the, maybe, mediocre.

Yes, I want­ed it to not be the Amer­i­can dream thing. I don’t feel that’s real.

We [South Asian woman] put a pres­sure on our­selves to be the great­est. I want­ed to explore that with Lena’s char­ac­ter. What do you think about the Brown Excel­lence thing? Is Brown Excel­lence valu­able? Being Dig­ni­fied, that’s some­thing also applied to us.

Yeah. It is valu­able and it isn’t. [We see it in] Saleem’s char­ac­ter. He’s a doc­tor, but with a dark side. Ria, she wants to be a stunt­woman, the job that gets over­looked, the per­son who gets thrown, not the flashy, impres­sive dream. That was impor­tant to me.

What would teenage Nida make of you, as you are today?

I nev­er saw myself as a per­son who push­es things. I’m not Ria. I was more of a good girl, being the right daugh­ter for my par­ents to tell their friends about. I still have my good girl issues, even though, since Doc­tor Who, my par­ents are on board. All my work tries to deal with this good girl, pro­cess­ing the shame, the pres­sure. The teenage me…I think she would be pret­ty impressed by herself.