Ardent. Dissonant. Raw. Punk rock embraces these traits, but its freedom and catharsis are more prevalent – just below its defining characteristic: fun. Nida Manzoor had channeled all that electricity into the impeccable first season of “We Are Lady Parts” as her all-female Muslim punk band smashed their way through London’s white, male-dominated rock scene.
First, the band had to get people to take it seriously. Then they had to find a venue that could book them.
While none opened their doors, Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), Ayesha (Juliette Motamed), Bisha (Faith Omole), Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse) and Amina (Anjana Vasan) relied on the DIY principles of the movement, building their own stage in a construction supply yard.
The fans came – as did skeptical Amina, who was almost humiliated by her vocation as a gifted guitarist by her peers demanding that she behave like a real Muslim woman.
Storming the stage in 2021 to universal acclaim and success, Manzoor’s scrappy comedy has also earned a devoted fan base. But as Lady Parts’ latest adventures picks up just weeks after its live-action triumph, series loyalists are concerned about Peacock’s delay in greenlighting a second season. It finally happened – almost three years after the first abandonment.
So why this delay? Was the BAFTA and Peabody Award-winning comedy, like its heroines, too punk rock for the tastes of a major media conglomerate? No way. The opposite is happening, Manzoor said in a video call from his home in Britain. She was already committed to another gig by the time her TV show ended: her well-received 2023 martial arts action feature film, “Polite Society.”
“Films take time. I didn’t realize how long it would take,” Manzoor told Salon. “But basically, I came straight out of the show, moved into the movie, left the movie, came back into the show.”
“I realize that for people it’s, ‘What’s going on?’ “, she added, “but I didn’t stop. »
The good news is that its disciplined focus has resulted in a tighter and even more exciting second season than its perfectly scored predecessor, which is saying something.
Yet there are other problems with popularity and success, such as the burden of high expectations. The Pakistani Muslim creator, director, writer and executive producer of “We Are Lady Parts” likens the pressure she felt to anxiety about the “second album” that could have shed light on her band’s follow-up adventures.
“True representation will only take place when there are several voices. »
“We Are Lady Parts” burst onto the scene in the midst of a pandemic with its wondrous vision of “sisters praying together, playing together, speaking our truth to whomever we can ask to listen,” as Saira puts it. on television that depicts Muslim women in all their joyful diversity, hijabi or otherwise, Momtaz, the manager of the band Shorthouse, rocks her niqab, dancing furiously to every beat and tight melody, playing the role of backup dancer, that the group plays its signature songs or burns covers of pop idols. .
Lucie Shorthouse as Momtaz in “We Are Lady Parts” ((Saima Khalid/WTTV Ltd/Peacock/C4)Vasan’s Amina, however, is the resident butterfly of the story. A guitar prodigy who keeps her affections to herself – as in the case where she hides her collection of concert posters inside her wardrobe doors – she is a quiet, kind girl whose spirit is too fierce for playing small. While the first season depicts Amina’s journey to define herself instead of succumbing to stifling definitions of female propriety, the second challenges her and the rest of the group to determine what price they are willing to pay for enter the mainstream market.
As in season 1, the second is still narrated by Amina, but now she works in a lab, shredding alongside her groupmates after hours. But Amina keeps her musical identity to herself – a hallmark of her time as a self-proclaimed villain that is, of course, a joke. Vasan’s character remains the nerdiest of the group and is still prone to social anxiety.
Some of this has lessened now that Lady Parts is a known entity with audiences clamoring for an album. Alas, adoration does not pay for studio time. Neither does their daily work.
Manzoor knows how difficult such negotiations can be. Aside from the industry’s usual restrictions, both contractual and unspoken, there are gatekeeping notions that she and the other Muslim women in her writers’ room wanted to break down.
“One thing that definitely stood out to us was that feeling of ‘there’s only room for one of us,’ and that was the narrative that we absorbed,” he said. -she declared. “I just felt like we needed to shake that up.
“True representation will only happen when there are many voices,” she continued, “and not just one voice in a space representing a single community.”
Faith Omole as Bisma, Sarah Kameela Imprey as Saira, Anjana Vasan as Amina Hussain, Lucie Shorthouse as Momtaz in “We Are Lady Parts” (Saima Khalid/WTTV Ltd/Peacock/ C4)That’s not to say there’s nothing to explore in the insecurity that comes with industry competitiveness when a fan group called Second Wife begins to surpass Lady Parts’ popularity by performing emo covers of their songs online.
These are not the real antagonists of these new episodes. Most of the conflict, Saira, Ayesha, Bisha and Amina face shoots from within. Amina is always looking for love and worries too much about what people might think of her choices. Bisha tries to balance motherhood with seeing herself as a rock star; Ayesha struggles with the responsibility she bears towards other gay Muslims.
Impey’s cool and often menacing singer Saira twists and turns at every step Momtaz knows is necessary if they want to build a clientele, including product recommendations. She holds her protest ideals dear, which makes the scene which closes the fifth episode particularly tortuous.
Sarah Kameela Imprey as Saira in “We Are Lady Parts” (Saima Khalid/WTTV Ltd/Peacock/C4)At that point, the band took a step that every professional musician pursues and realizes that the compromises are too great; even in a moment deprived of creative flow, the restrictions placed on him prevent him from saying out loud anything that the powers that be might deem too political.
Manzoor weaves surreal asides and fantasy throughout the action, making Saira’s struggle increasingly physical and violent the more she struggles. It’s distressing to watch, but perhaps not as much as knowing that the line activating the invisible forces to rise up against her was written long before the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza. War, as a term, is miserably timeless and therefore eternally relevant.
“I realize that for people it’s like, ‘What’s happening?’ But I didn’t stop. »
“Unfortunately, the suffering of Muslims is not new,” Manzoor observed. “When we wrote it and designed it, I wanted it not to be about a specific issue, because, to me, it’s a half-hour comedy show, and I don’t have no chance of having the real estate to go there and really give any political speech issue, any horrible atrocity, I can do it.
What it could do is present the artist’s perspective when it comes to navigating firestorms in any audience-facing entertainment role. Not only that, but show that even artists don’t see eye to eye.
“We are political simply by existing. Just by occupying this space we are political,” Bisha tells Saira as they face the tension between becoming a hardcore band singing “funny Muslim songs” like “Bashir with the Good Beard” or using their influence newly acquired in the world. music world to do the very punk rock act of speaking out against injustice.
Bisha is right in a way, which “We Are Lady Parts” proves by taking more space in the pop culture dialogue with a Western-themed appearance by Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.
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But the most direct encounter and exchange might take place between Saira and a punk icon she idolizes (played by comic Meera Syal). Her beloved legend never compromised and remained a marginalized entity, and yet she opened the door for We Are Lady Parts to occupy that space. So what should they do with what Sister Squire made possible?
“It’s definitely something that I felt like I was struggling with as a comedy writer, and I felt like comedy never does enough,” Manzoor explained, quickly adding, “Again, I don’t know if I agree with that. But I wanted to show a punk from an older generation who really had to fight… and give him complexity.
Manzoor also wanted to incorporate a theme of generational support – first through the Millennial group’s initial concern about Second Wife, a Gen Z group, and then by connecting Saira to Sister Squire, her Gen X hero. She wants to celebrate the broader legacy that art and music weave among women of color — “the support and the pressure and the jealousy and the bitterness, and the love and all the complex feelings that come from being not having enough space to express oneself.” ,” she says.
And through this arc, Manzoor hopes that audiences will wonder what success looks like. Is it about selling out stadiums and landing a record deal with a major, she wondered, or does it look like finding a safe space where one can speak, create and share freely his art ? The fact that we get to see her version of the answer to these questions in the new episodes of “We Are Lady Parts” feels like a gift — one that took a little time to arrive but is worth it.
All episodes of “We Are Lady Parts” air on Peacock.
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