Up until March 2021, Priya Kansara was working for a pharmaceutical company, attending acting classes at London’s Identity School of Acting in the evenings and sneaking off to auditions when she could.

Fast forward just over a year and she has recently wrapped the lead role in Nida Manzoor’s debut feature Polite Society for Working Title/Focus Features.

“It was nerve-wracking jumping into a career that you don’t know is going to work in your favour, but it was never a choice, it was just about timing. Acting is all I ever wanted to do,” says Kansara, whose first audition after leaving her job led to her role in season two of Netflix’s hit period drama series Bridgerton.

“People would say, ‘Maybe one day you’ll do something like Bridgerton.’ I felt very lucky for that to be the start,” says Kansara, whose passion for acting and dancing was ignited by watching Bollywood films with her mum, but whose academic success at school led to her studying science at University College London.

Kansara went on to impress director Manzoor (We Are Lady Parts) so much in her audition for London-­set action comedy Polite Society that she ended up securing the lead role of Ria, a teenage girl with aspirations to be a stuntwoman, who embarks on a heist to try to stop her sister getting married. “Ria is a character I would have waited my entire career to play — it felt like she already resided in me,” says the actress, who praises Manzoor for her representation of “a South Asian family that is so beautiful and real and funny and raw and badass”.

“There were moments when I was playing Ria where I thought, ‘I wish I saw this growing up,’” she adds.

After a whirlwind first year in the industry, which also included a small part in another Netflix series, Half Bad, Kansara is now working through the many scripts being sent her way as well as planning a trip to Los Angeles to attend meetings. Says the actress: “I would love to do things that are versatile and interesting and fresh, and grow as an actor.”

Contact: Jonathan Hall, Identity Agency Group (IAG)

Topics