Ms. Marvel episode two is now streaming, and ahead of its launch, we were able to sit down with director Meera Menon (The Punisher; Titans), who helmed both this week's installment and the upcoming third episode.
After getting into what her favorite Shah Rukh Khan (Baazigar; Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge) movie was, we spoke about the challenge of simultaneously delivering a universal South Asian experience while also showing us the unique experience of being a Pakistani-American teenager.
In our chat, she recounts her own early life growing up in New Jersey, talks about whether not being beholden to the greater MCU may have been a boon in disguise, and whether or not her time on The Punisher informed any of her decisions on this show, amongst other things.
Check out the full video interview below!
ROHAN: I want to get started with the hard-hitting questions, so what is your favorite Shah Rukh Khan movie?
MEERA: I mean, for me, it's Devdas. That's just because that's like, maybe my age or I was exactly like the right age, in my late teens and just angsty enough for Devdas to be just the ultimate kind of romance/tragedy that captured my heart, but they're all pretty great. They're right, I think DDLJ is by conventional wisdom the best Shahrukh Khan movie.
ROHAN: You also worked on The Punisher a few years ago... did having experience working on a Marvel show inform your decisions on Ms. Marvel at all?
MEERA: Not really, you know, every story is its own thing, and every show I do has its own language and has its own entry point into the characters. So, only insofar as like every action-driven show that I do, every experience I have shooting action sequences gives me more preparation experience and an understanding of the intricacy of approaching those kind of sequences. That's really the only place I'd compare the two but at the end of the day, they're just completely different experiences on a number of levels.
ROHAN: I think we all often get grouped together in the United States, but being South Asian can mean a lot of different things since South Asia basically spans from India through Pakistan through the Middle East, to even some parts of Africa, and so on. it's a wide range of places and while we all have similar experiences here that we can all relate to, there are also several different cultural experiences that are unique to each subgroup.
What challenges did it present wanting to accurately represent a universal South Asian experience while also giving Kamala a uniquely Pakistani-American experience as well?
MEERA: Like you said, being South Asian is not a monolith, it's also covers so many different geographical regions. Kamala’s family is from Pakistan, they're dealing with this backstory of their family having been caught up in the trauma of partition. That is all very regionally specific in the broader South Asian experience. So, I think by being as specific as possible is the only way to be universal and be able to really connect with people in a broader sense.
Our job was to just really hammer in on what was specific about Kamala and Kamala’s family’s story, being from Pakistan, having immigrated at the time they immigrated from, now living in Jersey City, the extent to which I connected to Kamala was that that I am a child of South Asian immigrants that grew up in New Jersey, and I'm as American as any other kid that's grown up in America, and I think that's how Kamala feels she's caught between the world of her family and the world of this place that she doesn't know that well, that her family's from, but that she's really being raised within, in terms of community, and the space that she wants to be in, which is the Marvel Universe, the Avengers, American pop culture, just being a kid, you know, growing up in New Jersey, in high school, and just wanting to love the things that she loves, and just immerse herself in the things that she loves.
So, being caught between those worlds I think is a specific story to first-generation immigrant kids and that was the part of it that I definitely felt I related to the most and, wanted to find some authentic representation for.
ROHAN: I think you pulled it off. I'm Indian, originally from Boston, but grew up in North Carolina, which is a vastly different experience than growing up as an Indian in New Jersey, as you know. But even though I've been out of high school for over a decade, I was still able to relate to the feelings Kamala has about wanting to fit in with the westernized American culture.
MEERA: Yeah, I mean, there's that kind of broad stuff, too, I think when you're - but you're right, like when you're South Asian growing up in New Jersey versus North Carolina versus Texas versus Palo Alto, like they're all different experiences and for Kamala, that first moment in episode one, where she's driving in the car looking at the skyline of the city and seeing Captain Marvel fly above it. I mean, that is so relatable to any kid growing up in the suburbs of a big city, but certainly any kid growing up in Jersey, you stare across that river, onto the New York skyline, your entire life, wanting to be a part of that thing that you're barricaded from by bridges and tunnels and the Hudson River.
ROHAN: While the Captain Marvel connections are expected, was it helpful that you didn't necessarily have to be beholden to what had already happened in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since you're exploring your own little subsection, similar to Shang-Chi and Moon Knight?
MEERA: I think that everyone at Marvel and everyone involved with the show, really made a point to make us feel, as the directors and all the creative people that were involved in their little corners of it, and my little corner was just these two episodes, that we were there for a specific reason and for the things that we specifically brought to the show, and to not feel like we had to fall in line to any one idea of what the show needed to be. I think that's why the show feels so textured, is that there are a lot of different influences that had input on the show, and I think that Marvel very intelligently let all those creative voices thrive in order to create that kind of melting pot of an experience.
ROHAN: Like Kamala wanting to be a superhero, being a director is something that's not expected of Indian kids, especially in the U.S., but you obviously found a way to do this for a living and be very successful at it. I know my parents didn't necessarily want me to pursue anything in film as a kid, which has changed somewhat over time, but what was that challenge like for you?
MEERA: My parents also did not want me to pursue this for a living. My dad was always like, you can keep it as a hobby. I was like, “how do you-- filmmaking is a very expensive hobby!” But like Kamala, I think this is why her story is so relatable to the first generation immigrant experience, like your parents came here, worked hard to give you all these opportunities, and then you tell them you want to be an Avenger, you tell them you want to be a filmmaker, like it's just as fantastical, possibly to wake up one day and tell your mom and dad you want to be a director. So, I think I spent a lot of time like Kamala kind of hiding it, hiding what my true passion was and hiding what I really wanted to be from my family and my growing up and coming of age and stepping into who I wanted to be was a process of summoning the bravery to do exactly that, which is why I think her story feels so relatable.
Marvel Studios’ “Ms. Marvel” is a new, original series that introduces Kamala Khan, a Muslim American teenager growing up in Jersey City. An avid gamer and a voracious fan-fiction scribe, Kamala is a Super Hero megafan with an oversized imagination—particularly when it comes to Captain Marvel. Yet Kamala feels like she doesn’t fit in at school and sometimes even at home—that is, until she gets superpowers like the heroes she’s always looked up to. Life gets better with superpowers, right?