Renaissance WOMAN

Singaporean actor Anjana Vasan has been building a thriving career on stage and screen for over a decade. Under the shiny exterior of her Laurence Olivier Award and a new Black Mirror starring credit, the clear-eyed thespian is keeping her singular focus on honing her cherished craft-even as her star rapidly rises.

- CHANDREYEE RAY

I love that one shot of Nida just standing in the department store, dressed in shades of brown, and the store is also all in shades of brown," Anjana Vasan pauses, her lips quirking up. "And, you know, she's brown. She just blends perfectly into the background."

It's not the first time the actor has startled a laugh out of me during our conversation. As we chat over Zoom one Monday nightit is morning for Vasan in London our distance is no match for the rapport we quickly find. ("It is quite rare for me to get to speak with a journalist who is of a similar background," Vasan had noted with excitement right at the beginning.)

Two little silver jhumkis hang from Vasan's earlobes, dancing gently whenever she turns or tilts her head. Her large, doelike eyes are strikingly expressive, and they soften as she cracks affectionate jokes about Nida Huq, the character she plays in 'Demon 79'-the final episode from the newest season of Black Mirror.

The satirical episode stands out both for its dark comedy and nuanced handling of heavy sociopolitical themes, but it's Vasan's breathtaking performance as the mild-mannered but idiosyncratic Nida that really steals the show.

"There's an inherent loneliness to Nida-a sense of someone who has made herself as small as possible," Vasan observes. "I think all of us, especially people of colour, are familiar with that feeling, when you're not from somewhere and you feel like you don't belong. And I've been not from somewhere twice!"

Like Nida, Vasan comes from a family of immigrants. She had moved to Singapore from Chennai with her parents when she was three years old. They would go back to Chennai once a year to visit their extended family, but had made their new home in our island-city.