Entertainment / Interview With Actress Supinder Wraich

Interview With Actress Supinder Wraich

Entertainment May 18, 2015

by Daniel Pillai

Actress Supinder Wraich Talks about Her Canadian Screen Award-Winning Role in Guidestones.

Fresh from her win at the Canadian Screen Awards for Best Supporting Actress in the Canadian television series Guidestones, Supinder Wraich is on a high. She speaks to me about her role as Sandy Rai on the popular TV show and chats about the significance of South Asians on TV.

DANIEL PILLAI: You recently won a Canadian Screen Award for your performance in Guidestones. Tell me how that moment felt for you as an actress.

SUPINDER WRAICH: It was unbelievable. Moments like that, where you're recognized among your peers and people you respect and admire, are few and far in-between, and I consider myself so lucky to have gotten one!

When they called my name, it was absolutely thrilling and terrifying. I thought, "Oh, my god! Me? I won?" And then came the realization that now I had to go on stage to make a speech in front of a room full of producers and directors and Jason Priestley. … I mean come on! It was a dream.

DP: Tell me more about your role of Sandy Rai in Guidestones.

SW: I play Sandy Rai, a Ryerson student who is on exchange from New Delhi to study journalism in Toronto. Sandy gets side-tracked from her studies when a school project unexpectedly leads her to a darker story that is inexplicably tied to her personal family history. From there we follow her as she sets out around the world delving into the mystery of this structure that is somehow attached to both are past and her future called the Georgia Guidestones.

DP: What's great is that you are playing the lead in Guidestones. As an actress of South Asian descent, how important do you think it is for the South Asian community to see faces such as yourself representing our race and culture on Canadian television?

SW: I think it's extremely important and particularly in leading roles that are complicated and not one-dimensional. Often we see actors cast into shallow roles based on skin colour, and I think that's unfair, for any culture to be diminished to a job description or economic situation.

It's important for minorities to be represented in every platform, and especially television, because that's where so many of us go to learn about life (or a highly dramatized version of it). Often we don't know our friends as well as we do a character on a TV show because we get a front seat into their personal trials and errors. Which is why it's so important for viewers to be able to access representations of themselves in media; to validate our trials and errors and, in a larger sense, to confirm ourselves and our place in this society.

DP: What were some of your challenges as a South Asian woman working in mainstream television?

SW: I think actors alone face numerous challenges in this industry. They possess very little power over so much of the machine of filmmaking, and yet when a project hits home, they can literally be the face of an entire franchise. It's an odd place to operate from. … A few of my own personal challenges in short form were: communicating to my parents the path I was endeavouring to take; finding an agent with a vision for my career that stretched beyond my race; facing the fact that there are less parts out there for ethnic actors … but I don't know that any of these particular challenges are rooted in me being South Asian or a woman. … I think the biggest challenges are likely the conversations I'm not privy to — the ones occurring in meetings between directors and producers and broadcasters and that conversation about whether a project "goes ethnic" or doesn't, instead of just hiring the best actor for the part.

DP: What is some advice you can give other aspiring South Asians out there who want to be defined beyond their ethnicity in the mainstream world but still want to draw power from its significance?

SW: I think just that age-old adage of being true to yourself. To be your own compass. If your passion leads you in a certain direction, follow it. And on the way, consistently check in to see if what you're doing feels right. And if it doesn't, take a different route. I've always found that if I listen to that inner voice that says "this feels right," I've ended up where I've wanted to be. And oppositely, when I didn't listen, I've usually found myself in situations that I eventually had to extract myself from.

^{_{Image Credits:

Featured Image: David Leyes Photography

All Images Courtesy Of Supinder Wraich}}

Daniel Pillai

Author

Daniel is the Digital Media Manager for ANOKHI MEDIA and the host for ANOKHI's entertainment channel, PULSE TV. As part of the dream team, Daniel manages all multiple channels under ANOKHI’s portfolio, while also training new on-air talent, and showing budding p...

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Interview With Actress Supinder Wraich

by Daniel Pillai

Actress Supinder Wraich Talks about Her Canadian Screen Award-Winning Role in Guidestones.

Daniel Pillai

COMMENTS

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