Priya Kansara: ​‘I nev­er thought that I’d be a comedic actor’

If you take a peek at Priya Kansara’s act­ing CV, you’ll cur­rent­ly only see a cou­ple of cred­its: three short films; small roles in two Net­flix series; and now, the lead role in Nida Manzoor’s Polite Soci­ety. An actress very much at the begin­ning of what promis­es to be a sto­ried career, Kansara stud­ied sci­ence at uni­ver­si­ty and was work­ing in health­care com­mu­ni­ca­tions pri­or to mak­ing the giant leap towards performance.

She stud­ied act­ing at the Iden­ti­ty School, which was found­ed by Femi Oguns in 2003 and counts John Boye­ga and Leti­tia Wright among its alum­ni. After audi­tion­ing for a dif­fer­ent part in Manzoor’s debut fea­ture, Kansara impressed the team so much she was asked to read for the lead. She announces her­self in dra­mat­ic and com­ic style with Polite Soci­ety and brings an infec­tious, sun­ny ener­gy and wil­ful­ness to the char­ac­ter of Ria, who must con­tend with dis­ap­prov­ing par­ents and her sister’s shifty new fiancé, all while try­ing to pur­sue her goal of becom­ing a world-famous stuntwoman.

LWLies: Polite Soci­ety is inspired by Nida Manzoor’s own child­hood, but it also has a res­o­nance with you, as you always want­ed to be an actress but were doing some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent until fair­ly recent­ly. Was that per­son­al con­nec­tion to the mate­r­i­al what drew you to the role?

Kansara: Yes, it’s def­i­nite­ly one of the rea­sons. There’s a scene towards the begin­ning of the film, where we are sit­ting the din­ner table and Ria says to her fam­i­ly, ​‘I’m going to be a stunt woman,’ and I had flash­backs of sit­ting at the din­ner table in my fam­i­ly home and telling my par­ents I was gonna gonna quit my job and be an actress. They said, ​‘Are you sure about that? Do you want to book a job first?’ And I kept say­ing ​‘It’s gonna be fine!’ You could have asked me when I was four-years-old, and I would have told you I want­ed to be an actress. It’s the one thing that I’ve always been deter­mined to keep up in my life, so I real­ly relat­ed to Ria’s deter­mi­na­tion to do the thing that she has always want­ed to do. Per­haps one of the things that I love about her is that she’s brave enough to try and pur­sue it on a larg­er scale at a younger age. I was very drawn to her as a char­ac­ter, but also the fact that this real­ly is just a love sto­ry between two sis­ters was some­thing that real­ly spoke to me.

Do you have any siblings?

I have a younger broth­er, but I also have a lot of very big extend­ed fam­i­ly and I’m very close to two of my cousins who are sis­ters and near to me in age, so I’ve grown up feel­ing like I have a lot of sib­lings. I remem­ber read­ing the script for the first time and I felt like I’d seen this rela­tion­ship my whole life, even down to the nick­names Ria and Lena have for each oth­er. I felt so instant­ly connected.

You men­tioned that you’ve want­ed to act since you were very young – were there any par­tic­u­lar actors who inspired you?

No one in par­tic­u­lar, but my mum was big on Bol­ly­wood movies, so I used to watch a lot of Indi­an cin­e­ma, and my dad loves action. James Bond, Mis­sion Impos­si­ble and Die Hard – you name it. I was prob­a­bly too young to be watch­ing that kind of thing, but it was always on the TV, and some­thing that attract­ed me is that cin­e­ma is a form of escapism, with all these alter­na­tive worlds to get lost in, and I found that very inspir­ing. I think more than a par­tic­u­lar film or per­son, it was my love of per­for­mance that moti­vat­ed me.

As a British-Indi­an actress, how much did your per­cep­tions of the industry’s rela­tion­ship with race in this coun­try impact your journey?

You don’t see a lot of your­self on screen or on stage and I think that’s why I didn’t take the tra­di­tion­al route as an actress. I didn’t study act­ing full-time, because I just didn’t know if I could do it – if there was the space for me. For me, I was always act­ing as a hob­by, and I’m so thank­ful my fam­i­ly and my friends were all so sup­port­ive of me doing it – tak­ing me to musi­cal the­atre clubs, or com­ing to see me per­form at dra­ma club.

At uni­ver­si­ty I spent all of my free time doing as many shows as I pos­si­bly could. That was my out­let, and that was the way that I kept it alive for myself, and by the time I grad­u­at­ed, I’d start­ed to hear of and see more peo­ple like me doing it. I felt I had to take that risk. So, I was work­ing in health­care com­mu­ni­ca­tions dur­ing the day, and in the evening, I would do dra­ma school at the Iden­ti­ty School of Act­ing. I wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly rec­om­mend that to every­one because it is spread­ing your­self very, very thin. But to me it was the sac­ri­fice that I was going to make to do what I loved – it was some­thing I had to do.

What do you feel the expe­ri­ence of attend­ing Iden­ti­ty gave you?

Just to be open, be curi­ous and to strive for excel­lence. We don’t strive for an out­come, we strive to be good at what we do. Being in that envi­ron­ment real­ly con­firmed my belief in myself and that act­ing is some­thing I want­ed to do. It doesn’t work the same as a full-time school, so I wasn’t able to take as deep of a dive into cer­tain tech­niques and act­ing styles and process­es, but I gained such a sol­id under­stand­ing of what is out there, what tools I could use, what I could look into lat­er. I also learned so much from my peers as well, and how we work togeth­er and as an ensem­ble. This indus­try is so full of so many vari­ables – ulti­mate­ly 99 per cent of my job is not in my hands, and I only have con­trol over my abil­i­ty. So that is what I’m going to invest my time in. And the rest hope­ful­ly will come.

You give an incred­i­ble comedic per­for­mance as Ria – is com­e­dy some­thing you were always drawn to?

I’m gonna be hon­est with you, I nev­er thought that I’d be a comedic actor. I assumed I’d be awful at it. At dra­ma school we often focus on dra­mat­ic work and I think that’s what peo­ple like to do more. But you have to treat com­e­dy the same as any oth­er role, and be true to the char­ac­ter. Ria is some­body who is laughed at more than she is laughed with, because she just seems crazy to every­body else. Of course, Nida is such an incred­i­ble writer, and I also feel with this film so much of the com­e­dy is in the edit. There’s almost like an Edgar Wright-style of direc­tion when it comes to com­e­dy, and I know he’s one of Nida’s inspi­ra­tions, which I think is reflect­ed in this movie.

Speak­ing of Nida, this is her first fea­ture film. What was it like for you to take that jour­ney together?

One of the things I admire so much about Nida is that not only is she a great writer and direc­tor, she is the epit­o­me of an excel­lent and a true col­lab­o­ra­tor. She knows what her vision is and what she wants to achieve, but she brings togeth­er an incred­i­ble team of peo­ple to make that hap­pen. Many of the Polite Soci­ety team worked with her on We Are Lady Parts, and she brings togeth­er peo­ple that are also just as col­lab­o­ra­tive as she is, who can not only see her vision, but are able to add to it. For many peo­ple it can take years to be able to devel­op that skill, so to be able to cre­ate that envi­ron­ment at such an ear­ly point in her career is a true tes­ta­ment to her tal­ent and personality.

Stunt work is a huge part of this film as it’s a huge part of Ria’s per­son­al­i­ty. How intense was that to pick up?

I’d only ever done a cou­ple of class­es about stage com­bat – I’ve nev­er done any mar­tial arts or any fight­ing with stunt train­ing ever in my life. We had an incred­i­ble stunt team and I could list a mil­lion names that helped in this process. They are the rea­son why I was able to do so many of my own stunts, they so care­ful­ly taught me every­thing, but also were able to empow­er me through that process and build my con­fi­dence. It was impor­tant to me because it’s such a huge part of Ria.

Being able to do this every day was like get­ting into her body, under­stand­ing her phys­i­cal­ly and under­stand­ing her pas­sion, but also so many of the fights are char­ac­ter-dri­ven – like when the sis­ters fight, it was impor­tant to acknowl­edge that Lena is actu­al­ly more skilled, and Ria learned a lot from her sis­ter. So obvi­ous­ly her sister’s gonna kick her ass. But Ria does put up a fight, and she doesn’t stop. There was also this sense of build­ing in her con­fi­dence lev­el in these fights, because she’s not an expert. She’s still train­ing to be a stunt woman. The fact that I was learn­ing the stunts as we were doing the film was real­ly cool, because I’m not per­fect, but that’s very reflec­tive of where Ria is with her stunt train­ing in the story.