Minefield: Secret Lives of Brown Artists

"I never wanted to make it a culture clash."

Welcome to the Minefield, where we explore the secret lives of Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian artists. In this episode we're joined by award winning writer and director Geeta Malik, to chat about her new film India Sweets and Spices. If you haven’t seen it, it’s the perfect family movie for the holidays, and it’s now streaming on Amazon Prime. 

Be sure to follow Geeta @shetanifilms and check out India Sweets and Spices and her other films. If you have comments or questions on this episode, let us know on social media @minefieldpod or email us at [email protected]. This episode was produced and hosted by Katherine Ally Zaslavsky. Our music is by Tasneem Nanji, edited by Quincy Surasmith. Alexander Catedral is our sound designer and engineer. Social media is by Mackenzie Gannon. Minefield is a community effort, and we thank you for being part of our community.

In this episode, our new cohost Mackenzie interviews Sunita Deshpande, an Indian actress and writer who you might know as Seema Nadeem from Daredevil. They chat about her family, her journey to acting, being BFFs with Donald Glover, and her upcoming short film, A Sari for Pallavi. In the meantime, Katherine tries to delete Toy Blast from her phone and fails for the fourteenth time. 

"I think the nice thing in life is, if you really want something, you will find a way to make it happen."

Salaam and good evening to you, as said best – and worst, somehow - by the dude from the beginning of Aladdin. Welcome to the second season of Minefield. We are back from an abundantly long break, and I have returned to my closet, where they cut off your hand if – oh, I’m sorry, I meant to say it’s really hot in here. Those are the words.

Tune in to hear my interview with Fizaa Dosani, writer/actress/stand up extraordinaire and first generation Indian-American, as we chat about casting the new Jasmine, fending off dating stereotypes and toxic masculinity, and how representation really matters.

For more on Fizaa, look up Facial Recognition Comedy on all your social media.

"You can't look at a person and say, you're from there."

Meet Sade Namei and listen in as we chat about casting, cultural authenticity, and what will happen if even one more dude calls us "exotic."

It's this attitude that diversity is "in" right now. Like you're so lucky that you look the way you do, right place right time kind of thing.

- Olivia Khoshatefeh

That is the nature of what happens there, and so it becomes about how we see certain characters, like how we want to portray, like you’ll always get the Mohammed So-And-So to play the terrorist, but when it comes time for Mohammed So-And-So to play Prince of Egypt or Ramses – oh no, no, no, no, the white actors can take that one.

- Fahim Hamid

Authenticity to me is not necessarily a Syrian actor must play a Syrian part, a Lebanese actor must play a Lebanese part, an Egyptian actor must play an Egyptian part. It’s - the character is representative of what group of people, so an Egyptian character is representative, in the actor world, of a Middle Eastern group of people to me.

- George Abud

Welcome to the secret world of the brown actor