Let's Meet Aneri Shah
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🔨 What project are you working on that you are most excited about?
So my favorite project I'm working on right now is Lonely Girl, which is a comedy drama series I'm writing for the big screen that features four South Asian women navigating love life in New York City in their late twenties and early thirties. Basically it's Insecure for Indian women and it's really fun.
We explore nuanced things like queerness and sexuality and code switching at work and much, much more through a South Asian female lens. I've always been a serial media entrepreneur. During the pandemic, I made my first film, a documentary about South Asian and Black female ER, physicians and their personal lives and Lonely Girl is actually my second project.
So my higher calling is to bring complex sexual vibrant, South Asian female characters into mainstream media and I'm super excited about that.
👀What makes you feel visible?
Writing makes me feel visible. Sharing my personal stories makes me feel visible. Comedy makes me feel visible. So I used to do standup and there is nothing like getting up there as a 5’2 brown woman and being the darkest, most sarcastic, most enigmatic woman on stage. I love being on stage.
Now I take my personal stories about being queer, about being sexual, about being flawed, and put it into things like my first film, my first show, and in a society where I'm constantly having to code switch and suppress myself, I think self-expression is one of the most liberating things.
So what makes me feel visible is both the freedom to express myself, but then also, when other women of color and particularly South Asian women see my content, I love when it gives them the opportunity to express themselves. That makes me feel very visible.
🌈 If you could connect with one woman, who would that be and what would you say?
Okay. So I would love to meet Issa Rae. And I actually have dreams about that. So obviously I think the show Insecure is amazing and it's one of the first shows I've seen that centers Black women in a way that doesn't make it about them being Black. You know what I mean? Like it's just about women dating and living ordinary lives.
And I think that's revolutionary. Beyond that, I love how she builds local community and business alongside her art. I actually went to the screening of the last season of Insecure in Inglewood, out in LA, and Issa spoke on this small little stage in between seasons. And I was like, damn, she's the real deal.
I think she is changing the game for other black female entrepreneurs and other women of color who have big dreams. I would want to ask her, who are some of your mentors and who in particular gave you the courage to embrace this highest version of yourself?
I also really want to meet Reese Witherspoon.
I think she is a force both on the screen and in business. And I love how she's bringing women into web3. She never stops. I want to ask her, what is the most fun thing you are working on right now?
🌱What piece of advice would you give your younger self?
I would tell my younger self, ask for people's advice and then follow your gut. Everyone's goals and experiences are so different. Having mentors is great, but when your sense of self is still developing, as mine was when I was younger, it can be really easy to follow someone else's definition of success instead of your own.
So don't.
❤️Connect with Aneri:
Instagram: instagram.com/itsanerishah
Twitter: twitter.com/Caneri