Recently, my roommate and I finally got around to watching “Bend It Like Beckham.” As a South Asian myself, the depictions of British-Punjabi identity felt humorously hyperbolic. What may have been revolutionary in its 2002 release comes across as cliche and stereotypical today. However, it felt almost believable because of the authenticity Parminder Nagra injected into her portrayal of the central character, Jesminder “Jess” Bhamra. An actress of immense talent and skill, I was sure I would find a wealth of movies on Nagra’s IMDB page, even if I could not recall seeing her star in any big hits. I was shocked to find that the most notable thing that Nagra has been featured in over the 25 years since the release of “Bend It Like Beckham” was “ER.”
I could not help but feel something was wrong, especially when I compared Nagra’s career with that of fellow white cast member Keira Knightley — for whom “Bend It Like Beckham” set off a starry trajectory with her portrayal of secondary character Juliette Paxton. Combining this with how the “Bridgerton” Season 2 cast member Charithra Chandran recently spoke about feeling overlooked even after the immense success of “Bridgerton,” a concerning pattern begins to emerge about how Hollywood sees South Asian women — or rather, how Hollywood does not see South Asian women.
Chandran, in an interview with Josh Smith on his “Great Chat Show,” explicitly attributed her invisibility in Hollywood to discrimination on the basis of her skin tone. Despite “Bridgerton” purposefully casting South Asian women for its second season — continuing its controversial yet much-watched tradition of telling “race-bent” Regency love stories — both the leading South Asian women from its second season have been notoriously overlooked. Simone Ashley, the second season’s star and sister to Chandran’s character in the show, also said in March 2025 that she felt sidelined because of her identity.
Ashley’s interview was three years after the release of her explosive “Bridgerton” season. It was a part of a press run for “Picture This,” another “race-bent” South Asian retelling of a previous Australian movie, and posited her as a South Asian actress changing the trend of being neglected in film. Yet “Bridgerton” castmate Chandran’s comments showcase that little has actually changed in the past year.
More disingenuously, Ashley herself was again victim of the same trend she is supposedly dismantling when her role in “F1: The Movie” was famously cut and reduced to a non-speaking cameo. Despite spending a considerable amount of time promoting the movie — all the way until the early premieres — and even having a planned romance with one of the leads, Ashley’s story was cut in favor of more screen time for Brad Pitt. Only a week before her 2025 interview, Ashley had gone on “Who What Wear” to discuss how much her role in “F1: The Movie” had meant to her.
The cruel irony is further heightened when one considers how “Bridgerton” creator Shonda Rhimes continuously emphasizes that her goal for the show has been to uplift marginalized women into roles where they can also be seen as fun, desirable and sexy. I guess Hollywood never got the memo, especially when you compare Ashley’s career with how her “Bridgerton” co-star Jonathan Bailey has had a remarkable rise into the limelight since the show’s release.
The pattern does not just start with Nagra and end with Chandran and Ashley. Ambika Mod, the star of Netflix’s heartbreaking 2024 show “One Day,” went on record a year after the show’s release to speak about how she, as a Brown woman, does not have access to the same opportunities as her co-star Leo Woodall. It is even more striking when you consider how Mod, just like Ashley, was positioned as breaking the box South Asian women are placed in when “One Day” first came out. It is also important that “One Day” is another South Asian “race-bent” story, just like “Picture This” and “Bridgerton”; Mod’s character is white in the source material, a book of the same name by David Nicholls.
Research published in 2024 from the Toronto Metropolitan University found that most South Asian women do not identify with the representation they see on screen. Despite that context, the few that make it are often seen as revolutionary or trailblazing. However, when you consider that many of them often disappear from the mainstream all too easily, we must question the authenticity of Hollywood’s representation goals.
In light of this, maybe the solution to Hollywood’s “cast”-aside problem is not to cast another woman of color just to tout her as “changing the mold.” Maybe the real solution is to give us authentic South Asian stories, for South Asian women, by South Asian women, that do not just “race-bend” an already-existing story.
Yes, of course, Keira Knightley can bend it like Beckham. But are we forgetting that the whole point of the movie was about how Jess could also bend it like Beckham? And, more importantly, how she definitely deserved to bend it like Beckham.
