Meera Syal says she was sexually harassed and assaulted by two men in the media industry while she was in her 20s and struggling for work. In a Asian Network interview with Amber Haque, she said the attacks happened in quick succession while she was out of work, homeless and sleeping on people's floors.
“I was out of work, I was homeless, sleeping on people's floors, and then these two things happened in quite quick succession,” she said. Syal said the experience could have ended her career there and then: “It could have been a point where I gave up.”
Vigilauntie and the career risk
The memoir Vigilauntie is the reason the story is coming out now. Published on Thursday, it places the assaults alongside her upbringing, motherhood and the career pressure that came before she became known for Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at No 42.
She wrote that one incident was her first casting couch approach. In her telling, a theatre director suggested a role in a pantomime if she agreed to sexual acts, and she refused and left. A few weeks later, she wrote, an older male actor brought her to his home on the promise of helping her progress, then assaulted her.
Why she stayed silent
Syal said she did not report either incident to the police and did not tell family or friends. Her explanation was blunt: “You wouldn't even bother to report half of these things because A, you wouldn't be believed and B, everyone was doing it.” She also said, “The 70s, 80s and 90s, it was absolutely part of the culture.”
That culture detail is the part that gives the account its force. She said many women of her age told her the same thing had happened to them, which turns her memoir from a private account into a wider industry record of what got normalised and what got buried.
How Meera Syal moved on
Syal said the experience did not end her career. “The anger of the injustice of the situation made me seek out a bunch of women that changed the course of my life,” she said. Later, she said she “did survive, and not only did I survive, I thrived,” a line that lands as a career statement as much as a personal one.
The unanswered issue is the one she leaves hanging herself: the names of the two men. Until they are named, the value of the interview is in the system she describes, the work she lost around it and the fact that she chose a memoir and a public interview to say it out loud.
