It was empowering, says actress who played killer hiding beneath a hijab
“YOU all saw me as a poor, oppressed Muslim woman,” came the sneer. “I am an engineer. I am a jihadi.” It was perhaps the biggest twist in a series that has been defined by shocks. Meek, hijab-wearing Nadia in the BBC One hit Bodyguard was in fact a cold-blooded killer.
British-asian actress Anjli Mohindra, 28, who plays Nadia, says it was an empowering moment. “It did feel empowering,” she says, “even just from a feminist perspective: women are constantly undermined.
“We have this idea that women who wear hijabs are oppressed and do so not of their own will, and that is something that we need to think about and take stock of because that is absolutely not the case.”
The moment of Nadia’s transformation – seemingly almost physical in Mohindra’s powerful performance – came as a sharp retort from writer Jed Mercurio to the criticism that had been levelled at the show for its depiction of Nadia.
ITV’S Rohit Kachroo complained in the Radio Times that the “brainwashed female jihadi” is a dangerous cliché and the idea that fear of an oppressive husband is what entices women towards extremism is inaccurate.
Mohindra is not Muslim herself, her Indian family, she says, are Punjabi Hindus, but she adds:
“My grandparents grew up before the Partition, so we have a lot of family friends who are Muslim and I have Muslim family on my mum’s side, too – both my cousins are Muslim.”
She has strong feelings about the way Muslims are depicted. “I feel like a lot of the Muslim characters we have met on TV over the years until very recently have been very stereotyped and clichéd. I don’t think that’s just Muslim characters. Most ethnic minority characters and families feel twodimensional. My instinct when I read that first train scene says a lot about how I felt about the narrative we’re creating in the media, and particularly fiction – it’s so harmful.”
Mohindra nearly didn’t take the part when she read that the show opens with her character as a suicide bomber on a train who was wearing a hijab. “I felt like I didn’t want to be a part of the Islamophobic-perpetuated narrative.”
Mercurio’s willingness to point the finger of blame for acts of terror in other directions – the police and organised crime bosses are implicated as well – changed her mind.
“I think that interrogating the idea that a white British politician, white British security services, could be at the helm of these operations makes it much more complex,” she adds. She admits to being uncomfortable about one element of the role, however: “I have a huge amount of respect for Jed and his choices and a huge amount of trust in the decisions he makes,” she says. “But I didn’t feel the hijab was completely necessary. I think the same message could have been made [without it].”
To play Nadia, she says, “I just really imagined what it might feel like for someone who has lost family in an inhumane way and is constantly persecuted and vilified and dehumanised, and tried to come up with what that might do to a person, how that person might behave.”
Mohindra, previously best known for her role in Russell T Davies’s The Sarah Jane Adventures, and a graduate of the same Nottingham television acting workshop that has produced Samantha Morton, Vicky Mcclure and Jack O’connell, says she experienced racism growing up. She was born in London, but brought up in Nottingham, apart from a period on a military base in Germany.
“I was at a forces school for four years – the only ethnic minority student out of 2,000 kids. Some of those children had gone from Army camp to Army camp all over Europe and never really encountered someone of a different skin colour. I certainly felt a bit alien growing up.
“After that, I convinced myself if I pretended to be white and used as many white British references as possible – songs, bands, literature – maybe people would not think I was any different. At the drama workshop I never got cast as an Indian character. It was only at 18 when I felt conscious of my skin colour again, when suddenly I was just going up for Indian roles, with stereotyped traits – repressed daughter of a doctor, repressed teen who wants to run away with a white guy. It just didn’t feel like it was true to my narrative.”
In terms of roles, she notes, “I am at the mercy or disposal of the people writing the stories and the producers financing them.”
Mohindra is set to appear in ITV’S murder drama Dark Heart, and has recently filmed the ghost story Dead Room, written and directed by Mark Gatiss. She can’t see herself coming back as a series nemesis if there is a second outing for Bodyguard, and insists she would want some input into the role if she was to play a terrorist again. She is, she admits, a little anxious about how people will respond to her after the show, but says, “I think that comes with the territory of acting complicated roles.”