Pallavi Sharda: An Australian Indian Actress Living and Redefining Diasporic Storytelling

I grew up in the quiet rhythms of Melbourne’s suburbs, in a home where the smell of my mother’s curries would curl through the hallway while ghazals played on the radio. Our lounge room doubled as a dance space, my anklets chiming against the carpet as I practised Bharatha Natyam steps, the grainy footage of old Bollywood films flickering on a our living room television nearby. My father would laugh from the kitchen as I spun too close to the table, narrowly avoiding the plates.

I didn’t know it then, but I was already carrying a hyphen in my identity, the space between Australian and Indian, the fusion of two worlds that were both mine and yet never fully aligned. It was a space rich with colour, sound, and story, but also filled with questions.

Becoming an Australian Indian Actress wasn’t a dream you could pluck off a shelf in Melbourne. The community stages where I performed were generous but small spaces that celebrated tradition yet also framed me as the “other.” Even as a teenager, I felt the quiet ache of ambition pressing against the edges of what was possible in my world, as I searched for answers that weren’t there. 

The Quiet Restlessness

School was its own performance. I excelled academically, making it into an elite law school at 16. Unwittingly, I played the part of the “good Indian girl,” ticking every box. On the inside, I was mapping a route somewhere else, somewhere that could hold the entirety of who I was without asking me to flatten it.

Dancing helped. Acting, even more so. There were limits to where those passions could not only excel but also fulfil my happiness in the suburbs of Melbourne. It wasn’t that Melbourne didn’t have creative spaces, it did. They just weren’t built for someone like me to take centre stage, someone who couldn’t stop replaying Carnatic rhythms back in her head. 

When I was accepted into university, it was supposed to be the fulfilment of a plan. Instead, it became the beginning of my diversion.

The Decision to Leave

I told my parents I was heading to Delhi to study on an exchange program. That was the official story. The unofficial one, the one I whispered only to myself, was that I was going to Mumbai. 

I was chasing something audacious: Bollywood. I had no contacts, no industry mentor, no safety net. I only had 400 rupes to my name, which didn’t feel like much - it wasn’t. I had two suitcases and a belief that my childhood dream was both just in reach yet also impossible. I feigned participation in an exchange program at JNU, even paying the fees, but boarded a flight to Mumbai with my mind set elsewhere. 

The First Days in Mumbai

Mumbai doesn’t let you arrive quietly. The sweltering heat. It sweeps you into its monsoon-soaked streets and dares you to keep pace. The air was heavy with humidity, spiced street food, exhaust fumes, and the metallic tang of railway tracks. The city’s soundtrack was relentless. Car horns beeping in all directions, street vendors calling out, the overall buzz when you're in a city of 25 to 40 million people. 

I wasn’t yet officially an adult, but Mumbai wasn’t concerned with that. It pulsed with a kind of urgency I had never known. A continuous wave of people living, working, and dreaming in a compressed space. Everyone is moving forward, jostling for space, hustling for the next opportunity.

I had imagined the industry as a set of grand doors waiting to be opened. In reality, it was a fortress. Breaking in required more than talent, it demanded an understanding of the unspoken hierarchies, the gendered codes, and the social currents that weren’t visible until you stumbled against them.

I knew what travelling here in pursuit of a chance in Bollywood meant. Along with all the hard work, my body was essentially my instrument. My family taught me about the traditional dangers a young woman in this environment will face, which became a reality for me. No shelter, no community, no safety. Despite my eventual success, these scars I received getting to that point are still there. 

The Difficult Years

There’s no romantic way to describe the complex parts. The physical exhaustion of navigating a crowded, chaotic city. The mental toll of being constantly aware of your safety. The cultural negotiations required when your family’s protective instincts clashed with your need to be visible in a public, often male-dominated space.

I came from a North Indian background, so I thought I understood the multiplicity of South Asia. Mumbai’s rhythms were different, though, and so were its rules. I learned quickly, sometimes painfully, that the stage here was not only about performance. It was about positioning, politics, and persistence.

Every time I got to perform, it felt like the most natural place to be because I was allowed to be in my body. Those moments were my oxygen. Perhaps it was confirmation bias, but after such a significant move, I had to continually find the “I can do this” sparks to justify the leap.

The reality, though, was that very quickly, my body wasn’t the priority anymore. What it sought and where it had led me was, at times, almost nefarious. All the protective measures of my thinking mind went into overdrive, sharpened by the sheer number of unsafe environments I encountered so early, so often. Maybe I had gone in too gung-ho, too ambitious, too convinced this was destiny.

Some nights I lay awake wondering if I could survive this. Other days, I would find myself in front of a camera, the lights warming my skin, and I knew, without question, that I was exactly where I was meant to be.

Breakthroughs 

Eventually, through all the struggles, I had made it. From dramatic turns in Lion alongside Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman, to embodying a Lavani dancer in Hawaizaada at the height of the British Raj, to bringing comedic charm in Netflix’s Wedding Season, my career has been a series of crossings between genres, cultures, and continents. 

Somewhere in that journey, I became the first Indian-Australian to lead a Bollywood film, and later, the first of Indian origin to headline across Australian screens. Those milestones mattered not only for me, but for what they signalled: that stories could be told beyond the narrow defaults, that casting could stretch to hold all the colours of who we are.

My work has taken me from Bollywood (Begum Jaan, Hawaizaada) to British drama (Beecham House, The One), Australian tv (Retrograde, Les Norton, The Twelve) to Hollywood (Wedding Season, Tom and Jerry, Blacksite). 

In 2025, I got to clown in two Aussie theatrical releases: Spit (where I played a shit lawyer - yay to that degree!) and One More Shot (time-travelling tequila anyone?). Each role, no matter the scale, has been a way of saying: I will not be flattened into one box.

For me, performance has never been about fitting into the frame I was handed. It has been about reshaping it entirely - embracing its brown, brilliant, and unapologetic nature, and making sure there is room for others to follow.

Holding Onto Multiplicity

This industry has tried to press me into a single mould. The exotic outsider, the good Indian girl, the grateful newcomer. But I have never been just one thing. I am Australian and Indian, academic and artist, a dancer and actor. I have a voice I have never wanted to soften, a body I don’t want to hide, a mind I don’t wish to mute.

Holding onto all of this in an environment that demanded compromise is often exhausting. However, it is also what has kept me whole. Being the purple cow in the herd, I have learned that multiplicity was my power, even when it sometimes feels like my burden. Despite accolades and the greats I’ve been blessed to work with so early in my life, this is genuinely what I consider my achievement for phase 1.0.

Beyond Performance

With every project, I became more aware of the gaps. The roles were written without cultural nuance. The media interviews that asked me to distil my identity into a digestible stereotype. The scripts that flattened South Asian characters into one-note parts.

I had survived in this space, battle-tested, with every reason not to give back to an industry that had demanded everything from me. But creating space for actors and actresses like me felt truer to my voice and my sense of self.

The Birth of Bodhini Studios

In many ways, Bodhini Studios is not something I have “started”, it is something that has been with me all along. My work as an artist has always been tethered to the research-driven, academic brain I’ve never shaken. Art and social impact, the way we see ourselves, the limits imposed on how we are allowed to be seen. For me, they’ve always been inextricable. 

My artistry has always been linked to my identity, to the lines drawn around what is permissible and what isn’t, to the conduit that connects me to my histories, ancestral stories, soundscapes, architecture, drapery, and the aesthetics of being an Indian woman born in Australia, or an Australian woman living in India.

The problem i found was that the avenue to express all this and the space to do so without being cast as the beacon of “diversity education” was so limited. In Western spaces, my work often seemed smaller, reduced. I saw it in writing, when words were replaced or italicised, and in media appearances where my experiences were “butter-chickenised” for easy consumption. When I arrived in India, as an 18-year-old teen, I was told I used “too big words” and that my voice was “too strong” for the industry I was in. I was expected to be a supplicant.

Bodhini Studios emerged from both frustration and hope. Frustration at seeing South Asian, diasporic, and female voices reduced to tropes. Hope for what could happen if we told our stories in full, with their complexity, contradictions, and beauty intact. It was also born from a personal longing for community, something I had to forage for in Australia after a decade away.

For me, art and identity are inseparable. My creative work is not just about craft; it is about lineage, memory, and cultural architecture. Bodhini became the place where those threads could be woven into something tangible. We work across Australia, India, the UK, and the US because diaspora stories aren’t bound by geography. We use hybrid formats, film, documentary, and digital because our narratives deserve more than one medium. And we lead with empathy because it is the foundation of real storytelling.

The Work Ahead

I’ve been “the other” in every country I’ve lived in. I’ve been told my language was too complex, my presence too much, my voice too strong. I’ve been asked to soften, to simplify, to make myself smaller for audience comfort.

Refusing to do that has cost me opportunities but also protected my integrity. Now, the work is about building a community where the next generation doesn’t have to choose between success and authenticity. A place where multiplicity is not just tolerated but celebrated.

From the Melbourne suburbs to the Bollywood stage, from the “good Indian girl” to an Australian Indian Actress with a drive to create industry change, my journey has been anything but linear.

Bodhini Studios isn’t my company, it’s a home for stories like mine. For stories like ours.