Woman’s Hour and Celebrity Race Across the World participant Anita Rani is behind this new podcast featuring interviews with women who have paved the way for others. Her first guest is comedian, author and screenwriter Meera Syal, who talks about the key moments that shaped her life, the stigma of divorce within the South Asian community and the legacy of BBC Two sitcom Goodness Gracious Me.
“We’re not going to make a show that explains brown people to white people,” Syal tells Rani. “We’re going to do the stuff that makes us laugh, and it’s really specific. From that first moment where you go, ‘did your parents wrap the remote in clingfilm?’”
“That’s what caught people,” says Syal. “It was the authenticity of the experience, and it was such a great lesson to learn in my career. That the truly authentic things that land and that people respond to…are coming from your true voice.”
