Sumukhi Suresh isn’t waiting for anyone to hand her a golden opportunity

There’s an annoying voice that buzzes in the back of your head like a horsefly caught inside an airconditioned car. Unkind thoughts that float around in your mind get sucked up into a megaphone and amplified by this voice, sometimes even infiltrating your dreams or screaming loudly just when you’re about to speak in a room full of people. Sumukhi Suresh has confronted that voice more often than you may believe.

“As big people, you’ve mostly grown up without any external validation for your physical self. Sumukhi before comedy was very mean to herself, she truly didn’t like herself and that, I wish, was not the case,” she admits in a powerful short film for the sixth edition of Levi’s #ISHAPEMYWORLD initiative.

Suresh joins the incredible roster of names like journalist Faye D’Souza and filmmaker Zoya Akhtar who’ve shaped their own world and changed the perspectives of others around them. One thing she shares with these women is her refusal to wait for better opportunities to be handed to her on a plate. When she realized that most of the leading roles in films and shows were reserved for “stereotypically good-looking people”, Suresh decided that she would create a space for herself.

“I want the people who see me, especially the girls, to think, ‘I need to have confidence like her’, because I wanted to see someone like that when I was young,” the Filmfare winner explains.

“When you have control of your own narrative, it seems more hopeful. Which is a much better space to be in than to just wait for things to happen.”