Highlights
- Meera Syal has spoken publicly for the first time about being sexually assaulted by an actor in the 1980s.
- She says the experience changed the direction of her career and pushed her towards writing.
- Syal credits a group of South Asian writers with helping her recover and find her voice.
Meera Syal has revealed a deeply painful chapter from the beginning of her acting career, speaking publicly for the first time about being sexually assaulted by an actor she believed was offering to help her find work.
The Goodness Gracious Me star was in her mid-twenties when her acting opportunities had dried up, and she was considering abandoning her ambitions. She was singing with a jazz band in a Covent Garden restaurant and applying for jobs as a waitress when an older Asian actor invited her to a gathering at his London home.
He told Syal that he knew casting directors and could help her career. But after the other guests left, Syal says the actor attacked her.
She had believed she was safe because he was an older Asian man, almost the same age as her father. Instead, she was left traumatised by the assault.
Syal believes that experience ultimately influenced the strong, outspoken women she created throughout her careerGetty Images
The secret she carried for decades
Syal says she never reported the assault. It was the 1980s, and she could not face the prospect of putting her parents through a criminal trial.
Instead, she left the house and returned to the sofa where she was staying at a friend's home. She told no one.
“This is the first time I’ve spoken about this publicly,” Syal said.
Years later, when she began discussing the experience with female friends, she discovered that many had experienced something similar.
Rather than ending her career, however, the trauma became a turning point. Syal sought out a group of South Asian writers who encouraged her to write, helped her find somewhere to live and supported her through the aftermath.
“They healed me and awakened me politically,” she said.
From trauma to changing British comedy
Syal believes that experience ultimately influenced the strong, outspoken women she created throughout her career.
She went on to become one of the defining voices of British Asian comedy through Goodness Gracious Me, creating characters including the snobbish Mrs Cooper/Kapoor, gossip columnist Smeeta Smitten Showbiz Kitten and a series of competitive Asian mothers.
She later became known for the larger-than-life Granny Kumar in The Kumars at No 42.
Meera Syal with her medal after being appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to literature, drama and charity Getty Images
Goodness Gracious Me became a landmark in British television, allowing South Asian characters to mock stereotypes, family expectations and cultural contradictions from their own perspective. Its success helped demonstrate the power of comedy to challenge attitudes around race and identity.
Now 65, Syal is looking back on that journey in her new memoir, Vigilauntie: A Memoir – Innit?
The book explores the aunties, family expectations, racism and cultural pressures that shaped her, but the revelation about the assault adds another painful layer to the story of how she found her voice.
For Syal, the experience remains part of a difficult past. But it also became one of the experiences that pushed her towards the writing and characters that would ultimately change British comedy.
