She dedicated her win “to all my fellow travellers, all the ones who’ve been made to feel because of their race, sex or class that their stories don’t matter
The TV industry needs more diversity, “not just in front of the camera but in the writers’ rooms, in makeup vans and around tables where deals are done”, the actor Meera Syal said as she accepted her Bafta lifetime achievement award on May 14, The Guardian reported.
Syal, who is best known for starring in Goodness Gracious Me and as one of the first British Asian people to regularly star on British TV, thanked Bafta for “seeing us” as she was accepted into the fellowship, the TV industry’s highest accolade.
She dedicated her win “to all my fellow travellers, all the ones who’ve been made to feel because of their race, sex or class that their stories don’t matter. They do because the untold stories are the ones that change us, and sometimes can change the world.”
Bafta chair Krish Majumdar described Syal as a “national treasure”, whose role in Goodness Gracious Me – shown on BBC Two from 1998 to 2001 – had “changed the game”
Putting her glittering bindi on her face-shaped Bafta award, Syal, 61, recalled how growing up as a “chubby brown kid from Wolverhampton, I got othered a lot”, and how her father had studied philosophy and dreamed of being a singer and a poet, yet encountered the attitude: “Never mind bloody Plato, can you drive a bus or not?” on his arrival in the UK.
Bafta chair Krish Majumdar described Syal as a “national treasure”, whose role in Goodness Gracious Me – shown on BBC Two from 1998 to 2001 – had “changed the game”.
“You have paved the way for so many others – seeing is believing. I wouldn’t be standing here if it wasn’t for you,” he said.
Majumdar used his final speech as chair of Bafta before stepping down to urge the TV industry to continue building on the “seismic changes made over the past three years” in diversity and representation.
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