‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Star Amrit Kaur Takes a Dramatic Turn

When you star in a movie about the growing pains and intense relationship shared between a mother and daughter, what do you do when your real-life mom is in the audience?

Amrit Kaur may not have the answer, but the actress does have a deeper understanding after starring in The Queen of My Dreams, which had its North American premiere at this year’s SXSW Film Festival. The vibrant, touching film, which was written and directed by Fawzia Mirza (Signature Movie), follows two young Pakistani Muslim women as they come of age: Azra, a lesbian woman mourning the death of her father, and Mariam, who lives in Pakistan and dreams of moving to Canada with her lovely boyfriend.

The twist? Mariam is Azra’s mother. We’re following them at the same point in their lives—they’re both twentysomethings—in dual timelines, 1969 and 1999. Both characters are portrayed by Kaur, except in 1999, when Mariam is an adult; then, Mariam is played by Nimra Bucha.

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“My mom has seen [the movie]. She loved it,” Kaur tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed while on the ground at SXSW. It’s been a wild ride for Kaur, who’s been up all night trying to make it to Austin to make it from the set of The Sex Lives of College Girls Season 3 to the festival—she flew from Los Angeles to Houston, then missed her connecting flight and had to take a nearly three-hour-long Uber from Houston to Austin. She clutches her worry doll Banana, a gift from her niece that “identifies as a Watermelon” and brings her comfort along her acting journey.

Although her family was a big fan of the film, there was, however, one aspect of the story that Kaur’s family expressed irritation over: “They were upset about the fact that I was wiping my ass on a toilet,” the actress says, referencing a moment in The Queen of My Dreams where Azra takes a phone call from her mom while using the restroom. “They were like, ‘Was that necessary?’ And I was like, ‘Well, anything that disturbs you, I am going to do.’”

Although the story of The Queen of My Dreams is based on Mirza’s own experiences, Kaur does say that she deeply identified with both Azra and Mariam, who constantly push back against both their mother and their culture. While Azra wants to take back more control of her life from her mother, Mariam remembers feeling the same way about wanting to move to Canada at the same age. Kaur was so terrified to expose herself through this character that she did “the worst thing I’ve ever done—I walked out of acting class.

“I was petrified going into this movie, because there was so much to reveal that was me,” Kaur says. “Revealing sexuality, revealing anger with the mother, revealing disdain for my own culture. Of course, in storytelling, the goal is to tell my personal stories through the lens of the character.”

In the end, Kaur says, “I don’t know that my family understands the science of my method acting. [My mom’s] not thinking, ‘She’s revealing my relationship with her.’”

There are a few different ways one could read into the decision to cast Kaur as the main character and her mother in younger years. The most obvious is that they both look alike—women often embody their biological mother. There’s also the phrase, “You’re just like your mother,” which can be taken as a wonderful compliment or the worst insult ever. But Kaur has her own read on what it means that she’s playing both roles.

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“I think it’s significant because we’re mirrors,” Kaur explains. “We grow up in a society where I’m supposed to worship my parents. They’re supposed to be perfect. They can do no wrong. And then I grow up thinking I am the daughter of perfect people, so I cannot do any wrong. It is a metaphor that everything that Azra sees in her mother is herself, but she hasn’t made the connection yet.”

Kaur pushes the meaning even further: “That is a metaphor of every relationship,” she says of the mother/daughter roles. “Every person I don’t like, every person that annoys me or angers me, that thing is probably something I haven’t resolved in myself.”

But there’s something specific about a daughter’s relationship with her mother, Kaur adds. “I am a lot like my mother,” she says. “And I’m also a lot like my other family members who treat my mother poorly. The film allowed me to come to consciousness about my bad behavior. And it’s human behavior. It’s not some new thing. We all treat our mothers pretty badly.”

The Queen of My Dreams frequently oscillates between Azra’s storyline and Mariam’s from one scene to the next. On set, Kaur had to go back and forth between two different identities, storylines, and decades, often given only a few minutes to swap out of one role and into the next. “The difficulty was that we were going back from Azra to Miriam every day, multiple times,” Kaur recalls. “I was like, ‘I need you guys to give me 15 minutes beforehand so I can get into the body.’ It was challenging, but I fuckin’ loved it.”

Kaur relied on her acting coach Michele Lonsdale-Smith during filming, using different methods like embodiment and animal technique to fully inhabit the characters of Mariam and Azra. The actress also practiced under Lee Strasberg’s “relaxation” exercise every day before going to set.

“My coach has taken [relaxation] further, where you move parts of your body—the thinking is that we hold emotional consciousness and tension in our physical tension,” Kaur says. “There were a lot [of emotions] already bubbling, a lot of consciousness about my relationship to my mother. What I realized is: Yes, there’s a lot of things that I judge in my mother that are in myself. But I also realize that I’ve been angry at other members of my family for treating my mother in the same way.”

One of Kaur’s favorite aspects about working with Bucha on the same role, Kaur says, is how appreciative the older actress was of these acting techniques Kaur used to develop the character.

“A lot of actors are competitive with each other’s process. I suffer from that,” Kaur says. “But what I loved about Nimra is that she’s in awe of other people’s processes. I often find when I’m nerding out about acting, sometimes people can feel like you’re distracting or disturbing—when it has nothing to do with you. But Nimra was so interested in how I prepare.”

Something similar has been happening on the set of The Sex Lives of College Girls, Kaur adds. “There are some actors now on Sex Lives who study under the same coach now,” she says. “They’re like, ‘What’s your process? I like this process.’”

Speaking of The Sex Lives of College Girls: When we meet in Austin in early March, Kaur says that the cast is on their second day of filming Season 3 of the Max series. “It’s great so far,” Kaur says. “We’re on our first week, which is nice. Meeting some new castmates. But there was a flood last night in Los Angeles,” she adds, which resulted in that long-winded journey from LA to Austin.

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Although Mindy Kaling’s comedy series began with a core four set of college girls—Kaur as wannabe comic Bela, Pauline Chalamet as sheltered Kimberly, Alyah Chanelle Scott as soccer star Whitney, and Reneé Rapp as uppity Leighton—Rapp recently departed the show to pursue her music career. When I ask Kaur about this big shake-up and what it’ll be like to be a group of three instead of four, she seems unfazed by the loss of a main character.

“We have a f—oh, I don’t think I can share,” Kaur says, cutting herself off before revealing too much about what’s coming. “Well, we have other characters. It’s a different energy! [Season 3] will be [about] that: What is it to have new energies in any circumstance? That happens in college.”

Moving forward in her career, Kaur has a list of folks she’d like to work with following The Queen of My Dreams and The Sex Lives of College Girls.

“I would love to work with the Coen Brothers. I would love to work on—well, if Succession had another season,” Kaur says. “I’d love to work with artists like Adam Driver, Olivia Colman. [I’d love to do] an indie movie that is so indie but artistic in its message. I want to do theater that’s truthful.”

Kaur also cites Poor Things as a recent inspiration, adding that she’d love to work with Yorgos Lanthimos sometime in the future. She was especially blown away by Emma Stone, who won the Oscar just a day after our interview for her performance as Bella Baxter. “That was a fuckin’ masterclass,” Kaur says. “The insanity, but the relaxation in the body, being totally available for impulse and looking ugly,” she says, once again adding, “That was a masterclass.”

But for now, the actress has The Queen of My Dreams—which doesn’t yet have an American release date—and the upcoming season of The Sex Lives of College Girls. Oh, and she’s writing her own series. She can’t say much, other than the fact that it’s a dramedy. Because, just like The Queen of My Dreams, she says, “Those are the best.”

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