For years, ‘Ms. Marvel’ star Rish Shah turned to Bollywood to watch the South Asian community get the right representation on screen while growing up in the UK. He is now glad that the West is closing the gap and making it a more inclusive world for “brown people”.
His acceptance of the global project, ‘Ms. Marvel’, which is a story of a Muslim superhero, and revolves around the culture of Pakistan and India, is proof of his love for representation.
Speaking in an interview, Shah said, “The show represents just one part of the change within the industry in the West. It is just one story about one girl and one community. Growing up, I would have killed to have seen Ms. Marvel on a global platform. I have grown up on Bollywood. I remember watching ‘RaOne’, and watching ‘Krish’ featuring Hrithik Roshan. Now, it is really exciting that people get to see our culture represented in a really positive light. Hopefully, it just allows for more opportunities for other stories to be told. And that’s the most important thing.”
He adds, “With the show, I have gone on this journey of wearing my culture and just being proud of it. The whole team has been on the journey. We would listen to Bollywood songs. And that was the first instance when I could share a song, say by Atif Aslam, with my co-star, and just sing it together. It’s not often we get to do that.”
Shah, who is seen in the role of Kamran in ‘Ms. Marvel’, asserts that it is super important for him to stay true to his roots and identity in the projects he picks going forward.
“Right representation is the most important thing to me. But I wish for a world in which it’s not the most important thing where we have to talk about it. I hope that the industry is starting to make a change. And hopefully, it’s starting to make a change towards a world in which it’s normalised. Like, the world can imagine aliens, why can’t we imagine a brown superhero? It is an exciting time,” he says, adding, “Now, we hope, we get to see more stories. Apart from Ms. Marvel, there are so many more stories to be told.”
For Shah, the most important thing is to “play roles that don’t play into stereotypes. But rather subvert them, so to be able to do that is the most important thing for me, and to be a working actor is important for me, I want to continue to learn and grow… Hope I can continue to do so,” he ends.
