Shazia Nicholls: “There was distance with my Pakistani culture, but I’m off the starting block now”
The actor on her “geographically surprising” mix and how it’s blown the planet wide open
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week I’m speaking to actor Shazia Nicholls, who is of Pakistani and Colombian heritage. Shazia is next on stage in PARADISE NOW! at Bush Theatre, starting tonight. Shazia has also starred in Call The Midwife, Doctor Foster and a modern retelling of Antigone at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, where she brought her Muslim heritage to her role. Read on for Shazia’s story below.
How do you define your racial identity?
It’s changed over time. I used to give my full ethnic makeup, now I’m more likely to just say mixed-race unless somebody asks for more detail. My mix is geographically surprising – my dad was Pakistani and my mum is Colombian. On paperwork, there was never really a box for me. I would just tick ‘mixed other’ and then say South American Asian underneath.
I’m a mix of cultures as well as races. People are more likely to talk about race because it’s something they can see, whereas culture is less tangible. My parents met in Paris in the ‘70s at a French language class. My mum was an executive assistant to the person that ran the Colombian airline in Paris, my dad was a political refugee who worked as a labourer while he was seeking asylum. My brother and I were born in Paris, moving to the UK when I was about five.
My parents couldn’t be further apart in terms of the world and they came together in neutral territory. My dad spoke Urdu and English and my mum spoke Spanish, so French was how they communicated. It was the language we spoke at home and my brother and I’s first language.
How have you connected to all of your cultures over time?
As I’ve gotten older, I notice more parts of my personality that come from my heritage. Initially I connected to my mum’s heritage because she made a very concerted effort to speak to my brother and I in Spanish. That meant I was able to communicate with my family in Colombia fluently at the age of three or four. I could understand the sense of humour and I felt very Latina, whereas with my dad, I think there were cultural and religious barriers because we weren’t being raised Muslim. I think it was difficult for my Pakistani family to understand or support that.
In Pakistan, everyone wanted to speak to us in Urdu or English, but my dad and us mainly spoke French. That caused a bit of distance with that culture – you feel separated if you don’t understand and things go over your head. It’s levelled off now, I’m off the starting block.
Even with food, when my dad was working a lot he couldn’t cook for us. When we went to Pakistan, we’d ask for blander food because we weren’t used to it. I didn’t try it until I was older, I think I was scared. Then I realised it was delicious! What was I thinking?!
Did you ever speak to your family about any of these feelings?
I do remember having conversations about race with my dad. My dad was very clearly an Asian man, and he suffered racial profiling and harassment. As a teenager, I remember not fully understanding or accepting it, thinking that kind of thing didn’t happen anymore because that’s what we were told as teenagers. But we didn’t talk broadly about our mixed experience.
My mum has a very strong accent but she can pass as white. Colombia is such a racial melting pot, there are families from white settlers, indigenous South American people, Afro Caribbean people… so my mum’s family are mixed-race on mixed-race.
My actor’s surname, Nicholls, is from her side of the family. Her ethnic line is Irish – they migrated from New York and then to Colombia and there’s now about 100 Nicholls in the country. In drama school I was told that if I used my real name, Shazia Khawaja, with my headshot, people wouldn’t believe that I spoke English. That’s a direct quote. That people would think I was too firmly of one ethnicity. I have problems with all of that. But when you're so green and need a job, you think what would help you do that. I thought about what name would reflect all the different things going on in me and I chose Nicholls.
How have you brought being mixed into your roles? Do you think you’d ever be considered for Colombian roles, or are you pigeonholed as South Asian?
There’s a lot at play from my own personal experience, how I feel and the stories I want to tell. Then there are societal questions of authenticity and appropriation, what’s okay and what’s not okay. To be honest, I’m still working on it. I left drama school in 2013, and when I first came into the industry it was the first time in my life I felt confronted about my race and ethnicity and what it meant. I was repeatedly asked to define it.
One agent told me “I’m going to put you up for every doctor and terrorist there is going.” I got a sense that people saw me as very Asian, and I was angry. I know I’m Asian, but I’m also other things. I didn't understand why it made me so angry at the time, but I realised that it’s people trying to put you in a box of what they think you're supposed to be.
Early in my career, I didn’t feel Asian enough for some roles, but that wasn’t my fault – it was the fault of people casting and their narrow view of what an Asian person looks like. I didn't immediately fit into that. It’s a problem when my experience of being Muslim or coming from a Muslim family is erased because somebody has decided that I'm not Asian looking enough to play a Muslim.
Now, I don’t want to restrict myself because I don’t feel that I’m enough of one thing. I’m comfortable in the experiences that I’ve had, my heritage and the authenticity of that. I would be very comfortable playing a Colombian character that is not mixed-race or a modern Muslim. I’m emotionally, spiritually and physically connected to that experience. Questions of whether I could play a Syrian or ethnically Jewish person are trickier. It’s not a yes or no, it’s on an individual basis.
My role in Antigone was one of the hardest and most emotionally connected I’ve ever felt to a piece of work. It caused me to work through some internalised Islamophobia. It’s been such a valuable time in my life to reconnect with a part of my heritage that I felt I hadn't given the generosity, patience or space to in the past because I was so conditioned to assimilate into white British society. Only in rehearsals did I realise how much Islam was a part of me and how much I’d absorbed it without being aware of it.
I’d never thought of myself as Muslim, but I’m culturally Muslim. It was also interesting representing faith on stage in a way that isn't exclusively linked to race. We often amalgamate faith, and race and ethnicity without giving them the space to be their own things.
What’s the best thing about being mixed for you?
It’s opened up the world and my understanding of it. I’m genuinely grateful every single day, even when it’s been culturally fraught at home. People change over time, and my dad was ill throughout my childhood. He got a lot closer to his faith, and there were ongoing conversations between my parents about how to raise these two children from very different cultures. It’s not without its difficulties, but it feels like it’s blown the planet wide open.
I’m in a privileged position to have parents who were financially able to take us to visit our families, which I know is not the case for a lot of mixed-race people. I carry the acquired experience, culture and language of those different places with me all the time.
Can you sum up your mixed identity in a word?
Patience. I think there had to be quite a lot of patience from everyone: my brother and I towards my parents and their experiences, patience from them watching their children grow up in a society that wasn’t the way they were raised.
See Shazia in PARADISE NOW! at Bush Theatre from tonight until 21st Jan. Next week I’ll be talking to writer Sabrina Mahfouz. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox on Monday.
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Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi (by way of East Africa) and my dad is white British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.