Amrit Kaur: ‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Breakout Star
The Last Laugh
The Daily Beast
4.6 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Before The Sex Lives of College Girls, Amrit Kaur had only appeared in a handful of Canadian dramas. Hand-picked by Mindy Kaling to play Bela, a sex-positive, comedy-obsessed version of her younger self, Kaur defied both South Asian stereotypes and immigration laws to deliver one of the funniest performances of the past year. In this episode, we talk about her unlikely audition process, studying stand-up comedy to nail her character’s comic timing, what it was like to meet Kaling for the first time on set, how her conservative Indian parents reacted to the show’s more scandalous moments and more.
Follow Amrit Kaur on Twitter @AmritKaur and Instagram @amritkaur
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Looking back, I think this was probably the moment I knew I wanted to talk to today's guest on the show. |
| 0:07.0 | I love your Seth Myers poster. You can really see his face. |
| 0:11.1 | Thanks. |
| 0:12.1 | Yeah, he's sort of my dream guy. |
| 0:14.5 | Double Threat writer and performer on SNL, just like I want to be. |
| 0:17.6 | It's like, I want to have sex with him, but I also want to be him. |
| 0:26.9 | This is the last laugh. I'm Matt Wilstein from The Daily Beast, and that was Umrit Cower, as |
| 0:33.1 | Bella in one of my favorite comedy shows of the past year, The Sex Lives of College Girls. |
| 0:39.4 | Umrit was born in Ontario, Canada, and was virtually unknown to American audiences |
| 0:44.2 | before Mindy Kaling handpicked her to essentially play a younger version of herself on the HBO Max series. |
| 0:51.2 | If you haven't seen The Sex Lives of college girls, and really, what are you |
| 0:55.9 | waiting for? Bella is an ultra-confident, sex-positive, second-generation South Asian immigrant, |
| 1:02.6 | who also happens to be as obsessed with comedy as I am. And, in my opinion, Umrit helped |
| 1:09.4 | make her one of the funniest and most fully realized characters on TV right now. |
| 1:14.8 | So, ahead of the recently announced second season of the show, I was eager to have her on the podcast to talk about how she seemingly came out of nowhere to pull this off. |
| 1:24.8 | Let's get into it. Here's me talking with Umrid Kaur. Well, welcome. Thank you so much |
| 1:30.7 | for doing this. I have to tell you, I came to the sex lies of college girls a little bit late, |
| 1:36.0 | like a couple weeks after it premiered, um, but then just like binged it as fast as I could and was |
| 1:41.4 | so blown away by your performance in it. So I'm so excited to |
| 1:44.7 | have you on the show. Welcome. Thank you so much, Matt. And thank you for all your kind words. |
| 1:50.7 | And it means a lot. Thank you. Yeah. I was mainly shocked to learn that you had really only done |
| 1:58.5 | drama before doing this show. That's crazy. Yeah. It's |
... |
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