‘The Sex Life of College Girls’ Fame Amrit Kaur Featured in Teen Vogue’s ‘New Hollywood Class of 2023’
- The Toronto native plays Bela Malhotra in the HBO Max teen college comedy co-created by Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble, chronicling the lives of four roommates.
Toronto native Amrit Kaur, who plays Bela Malhotra in Mindy Kaling’s teen college comedy “The Sex Life of College Girls,” is part of Teen Vogue’s ‘New Hollywood Class of 2023.’ Co-created by Kaling and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” writer Justin Noble, the HBO Max series chronicles the lives of four roommates — Malhotra, Leighton Murray, Kimberly Finkle and Whitney Chase — as they embark on their freshman year at Essex College, a fictional institution set in a New England town.
The nine women featured on Teen Vogue’s list “are challenging perceptions of identity, of womanhood, and of themselves in the public eye,” through their work in film and television, the magazine says. “They’re concerned with building persona and staying true to who they are; they are focused on craft; they seek to push back on the limitations society puts on their lives and the expectations for how they show up in the world.” Additionally, they “are intent on discovering their individual selves and using that knowledge to change the world and ready to embark on adventures that make all this living worthwhile.” The other young celebrities joining Kaur on the list are Dominique Thorne, Myha’la Herrold, Park Ji-hu, Yasmin Finney, Isabela Merced, Keyla Monterroso Mejia, Ruth Codd, and Amber Midthunder.
Kaur’s character Bela comes from a conservative family, and after years of being bullied and made fun of, she is quite excited to explore sex and her sexuality in college. She aspires to be on “Saturday Night Live,” and as a stepping stone to that, she wants to be part of The Catullan, the college’s comedy magazine. And the 18-year-old, who’s both ambitious and horny, will do anything to make contacts and get there.
It was this opportunity to push back on long-held depictions and stereotypes of South Asian women as conservative and traditional, is part of what drew the 28-year-old to the series. “It has been a while since the world has seen young women on television discussing sexuality with a sense of humor,” she told ETalk, a Canadian entertainment news television show. She said she appreciates that the series “showcases a range of different experiences through its multi-racial cast.” Adding that Canada is “so multicultural,” she noted that the show will be “great” for the Brown girls, “especially in Brampton and Vancouver, who have not seen a Brown girl exploring her sexuality on screen.”
During the series’ second season last fall, Kaur was in Karachi, Pakistan, filling the independent movie “Me, My Mom, & Sharmila.” She told Teen Vogue that she “loved” it. “It was beautiful, being in my trailer while everybody outside was busting Punjabi beats, Bollywood beats,” she said. She asked “everyone who wanted to speak to her in Punjabi to do so in Urdu because she wanted to practice,” she told the magazine. In between filming scenes, Teen Vogue said Kaur “immersed herself in language study and spent her weekend nights on Zoom, training in her acting classes for hours.” Now that she’s back, she said her “Urdu is mixed with my Hindi, mixed with my Punjabi and English.”
“Me, My Mom, & Sharmila” is a mother-daughter story, directed by Fawzia Mirza, about an aspiring actor who travels from Canada to Pakistan to bury her father. “While in Pakistan, she and her conservative mother struggle through their frictions as they try to understand each other. Kaur plays the actor and the mother during her younger years,” Kaur told Teen Vogue.
She still lives in Toronto, where she grew up and attended York University for theater. Los Angeles “is a drug,” she told Teen Vogue, citing a reason for not making a permanent move there.