By Aditi Hrisheekesh, Co-Deputy Music Editor
Just days ago, Doctor Who season two blasted off, and fans are already buzzing. Ncuti Gatwa rockets back into the TARDIS and his new companion, Belinda Chandra, is introduced. Played by Varada Sethu, who you might remember as Mundy Flynn from last season’s episode ‘Boom’ - is hopping aboard as the new companion. The first episode wastes no time, flinging viewers into a sudden, intergalactic ride that’s every bit as unpredictable as it is exciting.
I sat down with Varada to discuss her acting journey and early creative roots and it was clear why she’s so magnetic on screen. There’s an unmistakable spark to her with a natural charisma when speaking about her craft, making the conversation both enlightening and enjoyable. Varada’s artistic passion took root early. Growing up in Kerala, South India until she was six, she was surrounded by a culture that regards the arts highly. ‘It’s very much a part of Indian culture,’ she recalls, reminiscing on the admiration for the Malayalam movie industry and its actors. Despite this reverence, she pointed out that pursuing the arts professionally is often viewed with skepticism within the community.
‘I think as a culture, we’re really invested in the arts but we’re not always supportive of our kids doing it as a career.’ Even while attending veterinary school at the University of Bristol, she always knew acting was her calling. ‘The passion and commitment come from within,’ she explained. ‘My advice would be to work really, really hard on yourself and believe in yourself, because no one else can do that for you. No one else.’
Indian classical dance forms like Bharatanatyam and Mohiniyattam also influenced her early relationship with performance. ‘It’s such an expressive art form that inherently goes hand in hand with acting,’ she noted. Learning to convey emotion through dance built her confidence and taught her how to connect with an audience - she speaks of the various roles that one must embody in a Bharatanatyam performance, nurturing a range of expressions and skills that prove invaluable on screen.
When asked about her favourite role, Varada admits it’s a toss-up between Belinda Chandra in Doctor Who and Cinta Kaz in Andor. Belinda’s assertiveness and clear boundaries helped Varada cultivate similar strengths in her everyday life - acting, in a way, can build a kind of ‘muscle memory’ for life’s challenges, she noted, minus the real-world consequences. Varada learned she’d landed the part of Belinda only a couple of weeks before shooting, at ‘breakneck speed’ - much like Belinda’s own whirlwind entry into a tumultuous world of robots and space-time anomalies. ‘I hadn’t processed it in that moment,’ she said, reminiscing on the moment she found out. Having played Mundy Flynn in the previous season’s episode ‘Boom’, the excitement she had on set then was undeniable. ‘I had such an amazing time on set and walking away was quite hard,’ she said, not expecting to come back.
On the sci-fi front, the sets of both Andor and Doctor Who share one clear advantage: the ‘whole talking to a tennis ball and green screen thing’ was minimal on both. Varada praises the ‘attention to detail’ on each set and how you can feel ‘the love and energy that goes into the job’ when the set is right in front of you. The environments for both sets felt undeniably lived-in for Varada, especially on Andor which felt like a proper town. The tangible props for Doctor Who, like the ten-foot-tall robots, were truly there, making it easier for her to ground herself in her character’s reality, no matter how fantastical her surroundings may be. Furthermore, Varada’s strong rapport with co-star Ncuti Gatwa stood out, warmly sharing ‘I absolutely love him’. She acknowledged how the energy he brought to the set was extremely ‘dynamic and you just want to match it’, which created what she called ‘a beautiful, kind of family setting’. This sort of camaraderie, she noted, could ultimately transform even the most challenging days on set.
We also spoke about how different preparations informed her roles. Getting ready for the role of Cinta Kaz in Andor wasn’t something Varada stepped into lightly. She spent months preparing for Cinta, ‘diving into her psyche, into the kind of trauma that she endures.’ She found herself poring over material that stretched her understanding of a revolutionary struggle - one book in particular, Shoot the Women First by Eileen McDonald, came as a real turning point. ‘It’s incredible. It’s a collection of interviews with women who are in revolutionary movements all around the world.’ She continues, ‘There’s a throwaway line about it - but what Cinta experiences is essentially genocide. It is a very different experience playing a character who is traumatised, who I also had a lot of time to do research for. Every part of her being is angry and hurt.’
Belinda’s background, by contrast, was closer to Varada’s own, she noted, and her prep had to happen on the fly - she was literally ‘thrown into the deep end’ (no time for a months-long deep-dive). Tonally, of course, Andor is ‘dark and gritty’ and geared towards adults, whereas Doctor Who leans more family-friendly. For Varada, acting is also rooted in an honest fascination with human psychology. ‘When you’re playing a different personality, you can pick up on the good traits’. Acting, as Varada sees it, can influence the self, being able to absorb the depth and intricacies of each character. By embodying the experiences of others, one can gain a ‘deeper understanding of the human condition’ - it is a unique way of gauging the human experience where empathy is of the utmost importance.
‘I love the spirit of Belinda. I love when she kind of became her own person and less like me. She’s such a special person that I got to embody for a while and I learned a lot from her. I hope to carry her with me.’
Have you been catching up with the second season of Doctor Who?
