Bollywood star Sonam Kapoor: ‘when you are in a place of privilege, you need to say something’

It’s very early on a chilly morning at Laylow, the Notting Hill members’ club situated a stone’s throw from the west London home of Bollywood superstar Sonam Kapoor.

In any other year this plush Bella Freud-designed space would still radiate from the mess and magic of the previous evening’s entertainment, but this winter the glamorous parties are, of course, off. Instead, the shuttered venue has been transformed into a Covid-friendly set for our cover star to step into some Dior.

Kapoor is currently readying herself for her next movie — a remake of the 2011 Korean film Blind — that starts shooting in Glasgow at the end of this month. But first, there’s the small matter of Christmas.

‘On Friday my tree is coming,’ she beams. ‘Even though I’m Indian and Hindu, we celebrate Christmas in a big way.’ Usually there would be huge family celebrations — her dad’s birthday is also on Christmas Eve — but this year will be much more pared down. She won’t be seeing her parents at all, but after the requisite two weeks quarantine her younger sister is arriving from Mumbai to be part of a small stay-at-home Christmas bubble.

Born into one of Bollywood’s most revered acting dynasties, Kapoor is the eldest child of one of India’s best-loved actors, Anil Kapoor, best known in the UK for his role as the quiz show host in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, but also the star of more than one hundred Bollywood blockbusters.

Entering the family business might have seemed the obvious choice, but surprisingly, she started her career as an assistant director: securing herself an internship as a teenager with acclaimed movie maker Sanjay Leela Bhansali. ‘He had no idea who my dad was,’ she explains. She shocked Bhansali by explaining she wanted to work behind the cameras. Even so, the director saw a spark and insisted on casting her for his next film. ‘I didn’t think that I could ever become a movie star,’ Kapoor laughs. ‘I had a unibrow!’

Since taking the lead in Saawariya — a romance based on a short story by Dostoevsky, released in 2007 — Kapoor’s star has ascended rapidly, despite shunning more commercial work in favour of challenging, controversial roles. Hollywood, for example, has called with ‘quite a few’ opportunities, but so far she has said no. ‘I don’t want to be the exotic Indian girl in a movie,’ she says. ‘I’m not going to be the woman in leather pants. I haven’t done that in India and I shouldn’t have to do that anywhere else.’

Instead she has taken on projects such as the award-winning Neerja (which told the story of Neerja Bhanot, the head purser on 1986’s hijacked Pan Am Flight 73) and more recently the lead in game-changing Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (How I Felt When I Saw That Girl), Bollywood’s first lesbian love story. The latter film has had a particularly powerful impact, especially considering that gay sex was only legalised in India the year before it was released in 2019. ‘I was walking in Whole Foods a couple of weeks ago with my mask on,’ she says, ‘and a young lesbian couple came up to me. One of them wanted to tell me that she came out to her parents because of the film.’

‘I’ve been an ally since I was very, very young,’ Kapoor continues. ‘My family is extremely progressive and very liberal. My mum used to be a fashion designer and a lot of people in the fashion industry are part of the LGBTQI+ community, as well as in the film industry. So I grew up in that environment, but then I came into the real world and found out that people are racist and people are homophobic.’

Kapoor’s progressive stance has previously got her into hot water. During an interview early on in her career she told a journalist that she was a proud feminist. ‘My PR at the time told me, “You can’t say that, it makes you look less feminine.”’ That PR representative didn’t last long. To this day Kapoor is still seen as more outspoken than many of her contemporaries, which is something she relishes.

‘I realise my privilege, my platform,’ she explains. ‘My mum once told me something amazing: “When you’re born with a lot, instead of building higher walls, you should build longer tables.” So if we as people don’t speak up for the LGBTQI+ community, if white people are not speaking up for Black Lives Matter, that’s not going to help. When you are in a place of privilege, you need to say something.’