Anjali Bhimani Says Joining the Cast of ‘Special’ was a ‘Perfect Course of Events’ [Interview]

Anjali Bhimani was in love with Special before she ever even auditioned for the Netflix series. When the opportunity to play Kim’s mother on the show came her way, it was a “no brainer” for a few reasons.

Bhimani joins the cast of Special, a semi-autobiographical comedy from Ryan O’Connell, for Season 2 as the mother of Kim (Punam Patel). I recently had the chance to chat with Bhimani about her role on the show and her surprising connection the two women shared.

Bhimani told me she and Punam Patel were friends before Special began its first season. So of course, she wanted to watch the series her friend was starring in. She then fell in love with the show along with other fans.

“It’s just this beautiful celebration of finding your way and finding your path to a bigger life, no matter what the set of circumstances you happen to be in,” Bhimani said. “The writing is just fantastic and creative and everybody on the show is so great.”

When she got the chance to audition to play the mother of Patel’s character, she was thrilled. “The fact that we actually got to do it together has just been magical,” Bhimani shared. “She’s so talented, and she’s so wonderful.”

The two had actually worked on a pilot together several years before, which is how they first met.

“I effectively would’ve been playing what we would have called her auntie in the Indian community, which is not necessarily an aunt so much as a like, extended family or extended friend network of elders, shall we say. Pretty much in Indian culture, if someone is an elder to you, it’s an auntie or an uncle, generally speaking.”

“It just ended up being a perfect course of events,” she said, noting how fitting the casting for her role on Special felt.

Bhimani called working with Patel and the rest of the cast “an embarrassment of riches.”

“The whole family, and one other close-to-the-family character, that were cast were all other incredible people from our Indian acting community. Karan Soni plays my son, her brother. He is hi-freaking-larious. Ajay Mehta, who I’ve already been married to before on TV, he plays my husband. Utkarsh Ambudkar, who is an incredible talent, plays a family friend. That whole unit of people was just… I mean, the amount of laughing that was going on off-screen was pretty magnificent.”

Adding to the positive vibe on set was the safety Bhimani said she felt with new health protocols in place. She said they began shooting the season just as television production was beginning to start back up again.

“There was a little bit of uncertainty as to how that was going to work, but they did such an incredible job making it not only safe, but alleviating concerns, I think is the best way to put it,” she said. “I felt safer on set than I felt in many places outside of the set.”

“One of the things the person training us said, is please be compassionate towards each other — extra, extra compassionate towards each other because you don’t know what other people have been going through during this time,” Bhimani recalled.

“I loved that that was a focus just as much as wearing our PPE and staying six feet apart when we weren’t shooting and all of this stuff. I feel like that is an oft-forgotten element when people are trying to take care of health things. I think right now taking care of everybody’s mental and emotional health on set is a really important,” she continued. “Because of that, I think we were able to have such a lighthearted set.” 

Bhimani also discussed her character in some detail, noting an interesting dynamic between Bina and her daughter.

“I think she gets an A for effort and a C minus for executions in her tact department. I feel like, as is the case with many mothers who want the best for their children, she might not be the best at expressing how she wants her child to succeed or expressing how she wants her child to behave,” she said. “I know she has a really good heart. There’re some really lovely moments amidst the more critical ones. She’s probably got her some stuff to work out herself.”

“She’s fabulous, which I love because Kim is fabulous. You sort of see where she gets part of it from, but Kim’s fabulous in her own way. There’s definitely an interesting family dynamic.”

If you’ve been following Anjali Bhimani for a while, you may also know about her YouTube channel, and her series “I Am Fun Size.” Bhimani shared a bit about that project, which she began in 2017.

“I did it because the online community that had been so supportive of me really inspired me with their creativity and their kindness and their willingness to put their own art out there. I felt like I really wanted to give something back,” Bhmiani explained.

“I feel like the one thing that I have to offer people that no one else has is my personal life experience. And so I created this show because even though a fun size might be in reference to my petite stature, I feel like we are all fun size. We are all built for fun. We’re built to have these huge magnificent lives and sometimes no matter where you are or who you are, what’s going on in your life, sometimes you feel very small. Sometimes you feel like people don’t see you.”

“What I wanted to do was offer a place where people could send me questions, not necessarily about characters or specific things that I was working on, but how do you deal with this in your life?” she continued. “I’m no doctor — I just play them on TV, but I do have my life experience to draw from and say, ‘This is something that I dealt with at this time, and this is how I dealt with it.'”

—

Special Season 2 is currently streaming on Netflix.

*Featured image credit: Matthew Kenneth

 Follow us on Twitter and on Instagram!

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!