Actress praises EastEnders portrayal of multicultural London

'EastEnders' actress Nina Wadia has praised the BBC1 soap for showing the multicultural realities of London.

The 45-year-old also said she thought it was important that viewers judged her on-screen family, the Masoods, as characters rather than as Muslims.

Wadia, who appears in a film called 'I Can’t Think Straight', out today, said she felt the BBC1 soap had become more realistic since she had been cast as Muslim Indian matriarch Zainab Masood.

Asked whether it was reflective of multicultural London she said: “It is now that we’re in it. People complained before because in the real East End there are a lot of Indian and Pakistani people and EastEnders wasn’t reflective, so they have tried to do that now.

“What they didn’t want to do was bring in people for the sake of it, they wanted a family that would work.”

The soap’s scriptwriters work hard to get authenticity, she said, but the Masoods must still be seen as individuals rather than representatives.

“The writers do a lot of very detailed research so we don’t offend anyone, but at the same time we have to make sure that this is about the characters.

“These are fictional characters and we try to be representative but at the end of the day we can’t not be controversial – and that’s the biggest difficulty with playing Muslim characters.

“At some point in the future we’re going to have to get controversial because those things exist out there and we don’t want to shy away from that,” she said.

Wadia also said she was pleased Muslim people she met out of the studio responded well to her character.

“We work very hard to make sure that we can be as realistic as possible. I used to live in Hounslow and I go back there to do my Indian food shopping... I do get stopped. I’ll go to the butchers and the boys there will say ’I saw you on the show the other day saying ’Ay-Allah’... and we would do that’... (In the scene) a car almost runs over Lucas’ kid and I grabbed my chest and said ’Ay-Allah’... I thought, she is a Muslim woman, that would be her natural response”.

Zainab and her husband Masood Ahmed (played by Nitin Ganatra) are likely to have bigger storylines later this year when their eldest son Syed (played by Marc Elliot) arrives in Albert Square. Masood has also developed a close friendship with Jane Beale (played by Laurie Brett) who is married to long-standing character Ian Beale (played by Adam Woodyatt).

But Wadia said she was pleased scriptwriters had given viewers two years get to know the family before they faced more challenging situations.

“I hope (bigger storylines) will come up. I think... people’s perceptions of Muslims need to be challenged. Another reason for having us in this world and not giving us a storyline for such a long time... is because people have got to know the Masoods and people have got to like them, they’ve (come) to realise they’ve got to earn a living and do everyday things that other people do.

“If people don’t like Zainab it’s not because she’s a Muslim, it’s because she’s quite a viscous woman. I want people to react to what the characters do as opposed to what they do as Muslims. That’s what I like about EastEnders now is they’re not scared of the fact these are Muslim characters and they don’t hide behind anything, they let them be.

“If Masood, who is a married Muslim man, is developing a friendship with another woman, he should be judged on the fact it’s Masood doing it rather than it’s a Muslim man doing it,” she said.

Getting the family to engage in political discourse would be one step too far though, she warned.

“I hope we never go in that direction because I think that would be too heavy-handed but we could explore issues that are brought up by the religion, we can do that,” Wadia said.

The actress said 'I Can’t Think Straight', which is a semi-autobiographical film by director Shamin Sharif and billed as “Just another British, Indian, Muslim, Arab, Christian, lesbian romantic comedy”, was also forward-thinking in its content.

“It’s a pioneering script. For both leads to be of Asian descent is a big deal for a start, and female on top of that, and gay.

“It’s got all the elements of something very different and very new.”