Ep 399: Anu Bhatt on Reclaiming Agency

First appearing on this pod on 22 October 2019 (#219), actor and now also writer Anu Bhatt recently returned to spotlight “Autocorrect,” her debut short film that she conceived and created during the pandemic. Anu’s character gradually finds the courage and determination to insist that her director (a white female) pronounce her South Asian name correctly. As you will soon learn, this was truly a case of art imitating life. On the surface, this is simply about asking people to stop mispronouncing non-Western names. But Anu reveals that this act of insistence is actually one example of when people decide that it’s time to reclaim ‘agency’ over their lives for the sake of their own congruency and mental health.