Episode 59: Farah Merani - Representation In The Media

0:07 Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to the human Beauty movement podcast. I'm your host Jennifer Norman. Throughout my life, I've been a lover and a seeker of all things beauty from art and dance to cosmetics, and fashion to music and nature. But through my own personal Journey. I've come to discover what I believe is the most beautiful thing. In the universe, the beauty of the human soul, on this podcast, I sit down with beautiful humans from all corners. Of the globe and all walks of life to learn how they are living their own unique, Soul Beauties out loud. You'll hear from game changers. Rebels with great causes stages odds, feeders and Valiant Warriors who fall down seven times and get up eight. This is the podcast where abundant energy flows and supreme wisdom is bestowed.

0:59 Get ready to enjoy the inspiration. Hello, beautiful humans. I'm Jennifer Norman founder of the human Beauty movement. And your host. It's my life's work to show you how radical self-love and radical self-acceptance will lead you to manifest your most fulfilling life. So now there's nothing quite like the power of Storytelling particularly on our screens and my guest today is committed to diverse storytelling with an emphasis on increasing representation on all sides of the camera. Far-out mirani is a classically trained. South Asian, Muslim actor and Creator base between LA and Toronto who is performed on stage and on screen across North America throughout Europe.

1:40 And in Russia, she has appeared in Apple, TV's sea, and nbc-tv Quantum, Leap as well as Shadowhunters. And Nikita, Barra has lived in six different countries on three continents and speaks four languages and she's dedicated to sharing the stories of our family, her community and her ancestors. So welcome to Farah. Thank you. Wow. There's nothing like hearing your life kind of repeated back to you. You're welcome. Now our listeners are going to be eager to get to know you so why don't you tell us about your background and your work? Sure. Well, I mean you summarize the broad Strokes. I grew up in a small town that nobody knows called North Bay is about four hours north of Toronto. And I always like to start there because I think growing up in a small town where we were one of the few maybe a handful of people of color in town.

2:31 It was really impactful on me at a very early age because I didn't notice it. I didn't see it necessarily. Ali. I felt it but I didn't necessarily see it or acknowledge it because I was so young, but it was also really idyllic and it gave me the opportunity to be a part of so many different things. Like I was a dancer growing up so I studying ballet tap Jazz every day, every day of my life, that's what I wanted to do was be a dancer and I skied a lot as well. So, you know, my mom would drop me off at the ski hill and we'd spend the day skiing, and that was my upbringing. And then we moved to Ottawa and I did my high schooling and Ottawa which is where my family. Now, but then I went to University in Toronto and I really feel like moving to Toronto, was the moment where in my life, where I integrated, my desire to be an actor with the reality of what being an artist could be. Like, I went to University and it was the compromise and again that I think a really important moment to block. This is the compromise between my parents and I that I would go to college, I would study something, I would get a degree. And as my father liked to say for my second degree, then we can talk further.

3:37 As degree, I could do whatever I want. The second one, I think we talked. So I studied drama and Middle Eastern studies. Those were my two areas of interest and it was great. I got to learn so much and be a part of so many things. And when I graduated, by the time I graduated, I had a talk with my dad and I knew in my heart, and this is like, really the first time that I had the courage to to declare not just say it but to really declare that this is what I wanted to do in my life and mind you, I come from a family of medical professionals. So the idea of me pursuing a career In the Arts was so it's cute. It's a nice hobby, but like what are you really going to do with your life? You know what I mean? So I had a moment and I was being groomed to be a lawyer to be like, you know, the head of some business or something.

4:21 I was always very academically inclined. I knew that there was something compelling me towards storytelling and I was always a natural Storyteller as well, which ironically I learned from my father. So I remember sitting down with him one day and I was like, okay, Dad, I know you want me to be a lawyer but the only A way you're ever going to see me as a lawyer, is the day you see me on Law & Order. A lawyer. But I play one on TV one, right. So I think that was the moment where it stopped him. I remember his reaction, like he didn't know what to say. He was like, okay, if that's what you want. It's like, yeah, it is. Okay then and not to say that, it was wholeheartedly embraced right out of the gate but it really did become a moment of like a touchstone that I've consistently come back to you and I've played a lot of lawyers in my day now too.

5:11 So like you know my cousin who is a lawyer says I can speak really good legalese and Navigate a contract really? Well, like that truly was the moment where I think I was allowed to embrace my identity as an artist because from there, I give entire credit to my father. He said to me because I was in Toronto, graduated and he was like if this isn't the place for you to do what you need to do, you need to go and find it and in my heart and head. I thought I want to be on stage and I love Shakespeare's, so let me go to England. And my brother was already there. I moved to England and I went to drama school. There, I had this amazing. Raising experience living in London. And it's really where I became the artist that I am, and it was from living in London that I had the opportunity to live in Moscow story for another day, like the whole other thing that I experienced, I went to India and I lived there for a bit.

6:01 I dated somebody in Paris, I was back and forth between London and Paris and then I decided going to set up shop there for a little bit realized that was not the place for me and move back to London and then eventually moved back to Toronto and as soon as I got back to Toronto, I decided this Not the place for me either. So I set my sights on Los Angeles and I got my green card in order and two years later. This is also pre Trump pre covid landed in LA and I've been here ever since that's the five years now, so that's in a nutshell. I mean, so now all the while where you were growing up and you know, Toronto Ottawa, the places in Canada and even going to England. Did you find representation in the community? Like Like, were there others that were like, you can you tell me about that?

6:48 Exactly, there were few may be few and far between, but there were a few and I know we like, initially, like we all kind of found each other, or we clocked, we would clock each other. Mmm. It's like, I see you. I see you. Okay, so I'm not the only one. Okay. So there's a few of us here, but it wasn't the kind of embracing community that I experienced. Now it now, it is a completely different tone, but when I was starting out, I remember my mom said this to me, it was That she had received from one of her friends when they found out that I was pursuing a career in the Arts and I like oh it's so good of you to support your daughter in the Arts. It's so important that we have artists and then you know they have a conversation. Oh but my kids are not like I would never let my kids pursue a career in the Arts.

7:33 Like it's Brave of you to let your daughter do it. So there was this feeling of like I can imagine for my parents wrestling with. Oh gosh. What is my daughter doing? Like, why would she do this to herself? She's got so much. Much potential. But then on the flip side, being praised for supporting a dream that a lot of people are too afraid to pursue. And so as a result on my end, there was this kind of, I don't want to say it was a conflict, but there is a, not a resistance either, but there was a an odd disconnect between like, yes, I feel supported but then also, I don't have people around me who are doing what I'm doing so that I can see how to do it. And the people I do.

8:14 See, we're off. Pitted against each other as opposed to feeling like we're in this doing this together. So it was a very different sentiment where I really did internalize this idea that I'm out here, like a Frontiers person marking my own trail, doing this on my own chopping down all the path before me because I really didn't see anybody doing it. And those I did see I would emulator. I would try to follow in Step but I was always hit or confronted by a reality that was very different from theirs and I started realizing that it had everything to do with my appearance not as a woman.

8:55 But as a woman of color, hmm. For the longest time, in fact like I had chopped my hair off, I had really short hair. I had piercings, like I completely went in the other degree where I didn't want to associate with being Indian because I'm Canadian. First, let me Beacon API, let me be a woman first and then I moved to England and it didn't matter that. I Was Canadian, it didn't matter how I sounded What mattered, most was how I looked and I was confronted with the reality that when I enter into the world, people see me, receive me, but melanin in my skin, not by my gender expression and that was my reality. So it was really in moving to England that I had to confront a huge piece of my identity and really start embracing in a completely different way. And I'm very grateful for having been in England during that time because the Indian population of South Asian population, they call us Asians to the South Asian / Asian population in England is much more robust than it is in Canada and the United States and there's a greater embracing of Indian culture and identity in the fabric of society and specifically on screen.

10:05 So that honestly that's where I really started seeing authentic as authentic, it could be at that time for me, representation on screen and on stage because theater is Big part of the British culture. I really started seeing the kind of work, I wanted to be a part of could look like and then it really inspired in me. This commitment. And it like, I tiptoed around it, I started volunteering with the call. The, I don't know if they still call them. Call us this, the Emmys British minority ethnics. So it's very cute. The union had a committee for people of color bma's. And I started volunteering and it was through that. That that I started also observing how the industry was wrestling at least from the British side with this idea of diversity without calling it. Diversity.

10:55 And then I moved back to Canada and I got knee deep in with diversity and inclusion practices, policies and issues through the Canadian. Union through actra and was afforded the opportunity to be a co-chair of the diversity committee and that truly was when Artistry activism just like zipped up together and It became so clear to me that my work as a Storyteller, my work as artists just as a human being doing what I do that. It comes with a responsibility to embody the principles and the values that I stand by and honoring my identity. And my Heritage is a huge part of that. And I recognize that when I stand in front of a camera, or I stand on stage, the audience, whoever the witnesses of whatever, I'm doing the audience are leaving everything that I come with, whether they're aware of it or not. And that to me is really impactful, really exciting and just makes me want to do it more because the more like going back to something, we were talking about earlier the more we can see ourselves the more we can be it, right? Eleanor Roosevelt said this, if you can see it you can be it. And you know, I was actually thinking about it this morning as I was in my morning meditation and I was like even if it's one person who's impacted by seeing my face on screen or my presence on stage like that's One more person in the world that won't feel like they're completely invisible in this medium, which is very much how I grew up feeling. I remember here's a fun little story that I love to share. There was a show called Romper

12:27 Room, way back in the 80s. If you remember every kind of town or County had its own version of it. So in Canada, it was done by a TV Ontario. And I remember sitting in front of the TV obsessed with this mirror and I would sit there waiting this house would hold up a mirror and it would show children from all over the Town or like all over the country and I would sit there waiting and I was maybe three years old or something and just waiting for my face or waiting for her to call out my name. I was the biggest part waiting for my name and I remember my mom saying to me, once you know Farah, you may not hear your name that's like, but maybe if I just stay here and wait, maybe if I just keep waiting and I you know bless my mother for probably doing the best that she could at the moment but I couldn't imagine being her in that position, watching her three-year-old, waiting and waiting.

13:15 Waiting for something. She knew was never going to come. And that that lasted like every time I would go to a souvenir shop, I would immediately go and look and see Sarah. I would see Frank never see Farah and I mean on the key chains or whatever they did, so really feel the importance of claiming our names is a value and seeing ourselves. Reflected back to us is so important especially at a young age. Mmm! Gosh. So many lessons there. I'm going back to the part first of all where you're growing up. Up with your family, who's, you know, full of doctors, full of medical practitioners and whatnot. And you knew that you were different and that you wanted a different life for yourself. And so you are kind of following that calling instinctively early on of what you wanted to do. And then going into acting where you get to play a bunch of different kinds of identities.

14:04 But recognizing how important it is to kind of bring your heritage with you. Then, you know, you're coming back and embracing that part of your identity, whilst also being able to kind of play on, One other types of roles and things like that, and taking on the diversity of the world that you've grown up in. I think that's a very exciting. Thank you. Staying. Yeah, I think that a lot of people even at that very, outset, they're intimidated. They feel like, oh, my parents want me to do this. I'm going to be let down if I don't follow in their footsteps. If I don't do what they're told, they're controlling the purse strings, and it's white Graves at a young age to be able to break out and do those things on your own. And so, and having that okay, from the parents. And that That validation that, you know, we support you is everything, you know, it's like it's so liberating in a load off and then yeah, you're free to fly free to go to England and you're free to live out your jeans and explore and how wonderful that while you were there. You were like.

14:58 And right now, I really found my calling. I know you bring a legion with me. Oh, that's so nice. Little lovely way of putting it there. So, I mean, to point I think there's also something very real about like the Immigrant parent experience like truly my I came to Canada as a refugee, so like came with her education and her family that was it as a teenager. My dad is the eldest of his family and like, literally brought his entire family to Canada. So like there's a lot of responsibility and I can imagine the burden that they bore creating a life. And like, in a small town, in the middle of nowhere in Northern Ontario, where they were the only people of color. Like, my mother has shared with me some of the horrific stories that she experienced.

15:45 From the other Dance Moms that she protected me from, I was completely oblivious to she like a barracuda protected me vehemently so that I wouldn't feel the racism the Prejudice and the there was some of the vitriol that was being spewed around you really feel that there was any of that present because your mom pretty much put it for you. I mean, I think I had like, there was like this one group of girls that were all blond and they always had trios together. I always did Duets together and I was always like, how come I don't get paired with them. Like, I remember having those sentiments, but I genuinely don't remember ever feeling like because I'm a different skin color that I'm or a different ethnicity that I am lesser than I was a really, really good ballet. Dancer and my ballet teacher again, kudos to her mrs. To 11 rest in peace.

16:38 She single-handedly like nurtured my skill because she saw that I was really good at What I was trying to do. So she had gave me opportunities. And that was part of some of the conflict that I later Learned was percolating in the background. But, yeah, my mom, she'd like a warrior protected me from so much. I mean, there's a story that breaks my heart when I think about it, we used to go for competitions and he's big, you know, coach buses, and we would travel. And so we left North Bay and we were traveling to stay, it's probably like Buffalo Rochester or something. We had to cross the border. And as we cross the border border security guard, guy gets up on Bus and he's like, is everybody here at Canadian citizen? Everybody here was born in Canada. Everybody says yes and then one of the moms pipes up and she goes well, Nina you weren't born in Canada, were you? And so the Border guard goes, oh, come with me and takes my mom off the bus.

17:32 Like, it was like watching her walk of Gangplank walking off the bus, going off, having the Border guard. Check her passport. Yes, she's a Canadian citizen gets back up on the bus and she sits down and I mean she tells As me this, but she sat there and she cried because she was so humiliated. And Meanwhile my dancer friends were like, what your mom wasn't born in Canada. Where was she, born? I was also born in Uganda, like, that's no big deal. She's like Canadian, citizenship, as a Canadian passport, right? So, like I didn't click it. Never clicked for me that what she was experiencing was the weight of protecting me from carrying any of that. Until I'm not got much older as I started realizing. And this is why Bring it back to my career, I had this Reckoning a little while ago, that's so much of why I do what I do is to carry forward, the stories of my family and my ancestors. Because if I don't do it, what happens to them. If I don't share those stories, they're gone. I would love to know what your impressions growing up, were of your own Beauty.

18:35 Like, did you ever feel beautiful? Did you ever compare yourself? How did you evolve into your own kind of beauty? Well, Jennifer you are A real deep. This is actually something that I wrestled with for a very long time. Really, I never grew up the pretty girl or the cute one. I had beautiful hair. I still have lovely hair and I appreciate that. I'm so grateful for that. So people were always like wanting to play with my hair and stuff but I was the athletic girl, I was the smart girl that was never the pretty cute one. Even looking at my baby pictures I would joke that I was not cutest babies like my brother was a gerber baby and I was the first born so by default. I was beautiful in my parents eyes, but really for the longest time I was told I look like my dad and I internalized that I looked like a boy. So for so much of my youth up until about 17, I had a shift at 17 but those you know first years of my life I genuinely thought I was not pretty because I looked like a boy. I look like my dad and I now I know that's not what that meant but at the time I couldn't parse out check the Tension. And then it, like I said, a shift happened at 17, where I permed my hair because I wanted curly hair little. Did I know that my hair is actually naturally wavy. Anyway, I permed my hair.

19:56 And in that summer, I started getting attention from boys in a way. I had never in my life, like I also developed early. So, like my body, looks like a woman, but I didn't feel like a woman. I didn't feel girly at all feminine and any capacity, no matter what I tried to do was I Feel it on the inside and then it was like curling my hair Unleashed this connection to my femininity in a way that I'd never experienced and I started drawing that attention and it was really disconcerting. I had no idea what to do with that attention, and it made me really uncomfortable. And then by the time I went away for University, I chopped my hair off because like this attention, I don't like this attention, but then I started getting a different kind of attention.

20:43 I've got strike. King features like I've big eyes and I have high cheekbones and I recognize that about myself. So my hair short, it was like suddenly my face became Center, you know what I mean? And people started looking at my face in a different way and less my body. So it was this very interesting journey of completely disconnecting from my appearance not believing that my appearance had anything to do with who I was because I was a smart girl and I was the athletic girl. And then starting to realize that my appearance a try, Certain kinds of people. Hmm. Negotiating with those new feelings, doing a 180 just almost like an experiment to see. I remember even asking male friend of mine because I had chopped my hair off and it was super short, like, it was the days of Halle, Berry's short hair. So I would cut it like that and I was like, paranoid as I did, I make a mistake or people going to think I look manly now, and he laughed in my face, and he was like, Farah the way you look.

21:41 Nobody will ever confuse you for a guy. Oh okay and then going to England, it was up like this whole identity dovetailing of like my ethnic identity, my gender identity kind of converging. And it was really again in England that I started coming into my femininity in a new way. My cultural identity in a new way. And embracing all of them in the ways that actually made me feel more authentically me and then a friend of mine made this very insightful comment and she said to me, Because you know, insecurities pop up all the time and she said, fi you would not be in this business as well received as you are, if you were not attracted.

22:23 So if you ever feel like you're not beautiful enough or you're not pretty enough or any of those things, just know that you're still in this business, which means that at least somebody somewhere, find you attractive on camera. And I was like, oh, that's an interesting way of putting it, not that I put all my value on that, but objectively speaking, I can appreciate that. That makes sense. For sure, for sure, I'd love to hear what you think about the way that South Asians or perhaps Muslims are portrayed in the media, because I think that you provide almost a modern take to me. Like, if I were to look at you and just in speaking, without you being in character, you are a. Yeah, I mean, you're very much like, you know, this is what the new generation of South Asian Muslim. You know, individuals and Muslims are like, You know, we are all just, you know, ourselves. We are unto ourselves and we have our own personalities and we're beautiful.

23:21 But what do you think that the current situation is in terms of representation? It's so much broader than what it was. Even five years ago, there are a few shows that I look to as kind of guide posts of what I'm excited by in the world. Like there's a show called lady parts that came out of the UK and it's about a girl band and it shows Muslim women from across. The diasporic, that's the thing. A lot of people forget that, the identity of a Muslim is as broad as the identity of a human is, there are Muslims living in every corner of the world? There are different ways of practicing our faith, depending on where people are from and culture and religion converge in different ways. So like the way that I practice my faith is going to be very different than somebody from Saudi Arabia, very different from 70 from North Africa.

24:11 Or from North America. She's me for that matter like it's diverse. I think it's very exciting to see stories on TV now, showing different perspectives and different experiences of what it's like to be Muslim. Like there's Rami and Moe again, those are male driven. So, like that's another part of it, it's a male-driven story. There are so many more people making content now which is really exciting. And so this is again where there's double sided coin here. So the Muslim identity is 1 and then the South Asian identity is another and there are points where they converge. So Miss Marvel for Paul is a perfect example of evasion and Muslim converging in a story that is very personal to me like the story of partition deeply, impacted the migration patterns of my ancestors and it's part of my inherited. I mean, trauma is one way of putting of it. My inherited Legacy comes out of that experience, but I'm not Pakistani.

25:08 I've never identified as Pakistani actually fun little story to, I've been to Pakistan and I've been to India and To Pakistan first and I had this impression and I would go there and I would feel a kind of homecoming. These are essentially my people. If my family hadn't left, my ancestors, hadn't left, India to go to East Africa, they would have ended up in Pakistan. So basically, these are my people. Well, I landed in Karachi, I was there for six weeks and I have never felt so alien, amongst people who looked like me, it was the strangest disconnect. Like, was not anticipating. I don't. Speak or do? That's not my mother tongue. I'm not Sunni, which is one sect of Islam, and Pakistan is largely Sunni. So, there's a more traditional expression of the faith. The cultural references were not what I grew up with. And so that, even though I looked somewhat similar to so many people around me, I felt so alien. It was the strangest experience, and then I went to India years later and again, I was in India for months. I remember Landing there and Something in me just felt like home.

26:17 I'm not Hindu, I don't speak Hindi. I speak Gujarati which is a dialect but there was this like invisible knowing that I just got struck by because culturally speaking, the way that I grew up our practices are way more our inline or similar to those Hindu practices than they were with some of the Pakistani practices. It was this like Moon Head, twist, Shake of Reckoning. Where I was like, oh my Ancestors are from this place, not that place. You know when we talk about where do we belong in the world? I haven't had that experience. I so deeply believe that we have a connection to land in a way that goes beyond logic and I think that's why I like indigenous peoples are so protective and so deeply connected to the land that they have lived on for Millennia. And those of us who are immigrants on that land on this land, we don't Of the same relationship, but it took me going to a place where I have ancestral roots for me to go. Oh, I'm feeling something here by virtue of being on this land that I had never experienced elsewhere. That was really interesting to me in terms of Storytelling. Those are the kind of stories that I am interested in, as well at like, looking back at where we come from and how we came to be where we are, as well as the other side of the Spectrum, which is telling stories as As we are like my girlfriend and I are writing a film about three

27:49 South Asian, women who are of three different faiths three different kinds of South Asians who are not related because the only way, this is the running joke. The only way we're on screen together is if we're all in a family, if we're related to each other, right? Like we can't just be friends on screen together because it's too confusing. I don't know that to me is way more exciting than like the kind of token assist perspective. Casting where it's like, oh you've got just one person that looks like this. And one person looks like this in one who person. Looks like this great, you've got a rainbow but then what. Yeah. And what I'm saying about the assets rather than monolithic nature of what? A lot of people seem to do with stereotyping. Exactly Bingo.

28:32 Yeah, it's fascinating when you're talking about having a connection to the land and I often wonder about we're having a pandemic of not only Health but alone is like a lot of people are just feeling isolated and To themselves and depressed and alone. And I'm like, well what is it that's causing people in a city to feel like they're alone? What is it? That causes that's not feel that their belonging is it that environment is at the energy of the people is that the energy of the land of the buildings of the culture and then you go to other places and you're like I belong here, I just feel like it is a fascinating phenomenon. Yeah it really is. I wonder if a part of it is connected to this idea that we live.

29:14 In isolation of each other like we live independently of each other. I was talking to my girlfriend the other day and she's so she was telling me about her early days of postpartum and how isolating that felt because she had no family around her. And she was like, it made me realize why we live historically speaking in multi-generational homes when an event happens. Birth death marriage, it's people around you. They're exactly right. It's like literally we of inboxes separated from each other. The intergenerational element is long gone, right? We've in this Society, sequestered the elderly into another realm and you know, out of sight out of mind. And then we're left with what would just ourselves. I genuinely think that, that kind of collective individualization of existence is in large part. Why we feel so much more loneliness because we don't have regular connection to our people. Our family are literally are people most proximity. I mean I'm guilty of this to my family lives, 4,000 miles away and it weighs on me all the time. My husband and I talk about this, like, how long do we stay here for before we go back to Canada? Or do we go back to Canada?

30:30 We bring my family here which is that I would love to California because the weather's better but truly like you know the idea of having a family and not having my parents nearby is really not something that I would want. To bring a child into, like, it's really important to me. That my family is nearby, not just emotionally, but physically like it makes a huge difference. Hmm, huge difference. So as an actor, as a Storyteller, what would you want your legacy to be? That's a loaded question because I immediately have like multiple versions of an answer. Maybe I'll try and touch on each of them in terms of one part of that Legacy.

31:10 A really really important. Part is the continuation, the carrying Forward of my ancestors stories. Like I said, I had a reckoning about a year ago as to why that was so important. I am the carrier of those stories and if I don't tell them, even if it's like my children or my family members, like it's really important that that carries forward. And then more personally I feel very strongly that we're all meant to do something on this planet. I really believe that there's a purpose for everyone and anything goes in that it could be the you know the purpose to be a Healer. Could be the purpose to be an educator. I could be anything. And I really believe that part of my purpose in life is bringing people together.

31:53 I'm a connector extraordinaire and if I can do that through my Artistry by being in the live theater is so exciting because it literally bringing people together sharing an experience that is I feel strongly that part of my legacy be that bringing people together and sharing in an event in something. In a learning in an Sin and being affected by whatever in a positive way. Hopefully, great welfare. Amar Ronnie. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you so much Jennifer. This is such a delight. It was so great to meet you and have a really thoughtful chat. Appreciate it. He can't thank you. Thank you for listening to the human Beauty movement podcast.

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