Comedian Urvi Majumdar says one of the best aspects of working on her ABC comedy pilot was finally feeling understood in a writer’s room.
“It was really cool. We started off with shared knowledge, we didn’t have to explain everything as if we were the ‘other’ or try to explain our culture to people who didn’t grow up that way,” she says.
Written in collaboration with fellow South Asian comics Suren Jayemanne, Sashi Perera and Rohan Ganju, ‘Urvi Went to An All Girls School’ distils the quintessential 2010s Australian selective school experience in all its flat-iron-hair and MSN glory. But this time, it’s from the eyes of a brown teenager.
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“For migrant families, selective schools were such a big rite of passage or traumatizing experience, even just sitting the entrance exam and all of that. That kind of environment and expectations is something that we see in like American shows or shows in the UK,” Majumdar says.
“For [our writers’ room] it just became beyond representation. [We looked] at the different characters that we grew up with and expanded it with the lens of what it was like for us at that time. It’s just a coming-of-age era that we all went through as migrant kids in Australia.”
The show wears its influences on its sleeve, the binder-toting, ‘fugly’ protagonist Urvi inspired by classic cringe humour sitcoms like Freaks and Geeks, Never Have I Ever, PEN15 and Jamie High School Girl.
“When we think back to 2010, it wasn’t a glamourous teenage experience. We were just losers in high school…I really like the protagonist in Never Have I Ever, she’s sort of fierce and awkward and it’s fun. The humour comes from her having an inflated sense of self and that contrasting with the world. We always wanted to bring complicated and flawed characters to the forefront, and for it to be daggy like it was when we were in school,” Majumdar says.
Commissioned as part of ABC and Screen Australia’s Fresh Blood initiative fostering homegrown comedy, ‘Urvi Went To An All Girls School’ began life as a three-part web series adapted from Majumdar’s 2021 stand-up show of the same name, before being selected for a half-hour pilot episode.
For Majumdar, the whole experience has been a dream come true.
“When I was a teenager, I thought it would be like, Oscars and Hollywood [at this age], but given the realities, I still feel really lucky that I’m able to make a TV show and followed a dream that I had from a really young age,” she says.
Much like her fictional counterpart in ‘Urvi Went to an All Girls’ School’, a teenage Urvi Majumdar also aspired for a performing arts career whilst struggling to reconcile the expectations around her.
“Even though I went to a really multicultural school, it felt like theatre and the performing arts was still a really white thing; it wasn’t part of the Asian 5 to do drama and media!” she says. “Then in your own community, you’re like that freaky ‘coconut’ or ‘Oreo’ or whatever…you kind of feel like you’re living in this weird, liminal space.”
Though she still feels out of place, she’s glad she’s been able to pursue her passion.
“Like obviously, my parents are devastated. I’m not married; all those like expectations of like having kids and things that get put on hold [as a creative], but even if I lose everything else, I am very grateful to be able to be living the kind of life that I wanted [back then],” she says.
“I still have to have a normal job to support myself. But [I feel] lucky to have this opportunity and would love to make room for more people to be able to do the same.”
READ ALSO: Cutting Chai with Urvi Majumdar
