Ayesha Kanga, who starred in Netflix's Class, speaks to DNA about the show and her journey so far.
Acting was never on Ayesha Kanga’s horizon. As early as age 13, she had decided she wanted to be an artiste or a designer. But destiny, if you may call it, had other plans. Today, Ayesha is best known as the villainous Yashika from Netflix’s sleeper hit Class. In an exclusive chat with DNA, the actress talks about her journey and expectations from season 2.
‘I never wanted to be an actor’
Ayesha says she had no dreams of being an actor ever and her entry into the world of showbiz was very sudden. “It didn’t happen overnight. It happened very recently. I wanted to be a designer or an artiste pretty much my whole life. I had decided as early as Class VIII. Being an actor was never on the horizon,” she says. Ayesha got into the National Institute of Design after school and later, started working as a designer full-time. But then something happened that altered the course of her career.
‘Was fired from my job’
Ayesha recalls, “I happened to be fired from my design job at some weird point in life. That is when I decided to take a gap year from design and get into something new, which is modelling.” Ayesha says modelling started to work out well for her and her agency began encouraging her to audition for acting gigs as well. “But it was something I never wanted to do. I would audition just to please my agency but never because I wanted to,” says Ayesha. All that changed after Ayesha watched Made In Heaven a few years ago and the actress felt she wanted to be part of similar content.
‘Expected Class to not do well’
Ayesha’s breakthrough project is Netflix’s Class, which released earlier this year and was loved by the audience. But Ayesha admits that when she was shooting the show, she was sceptical about its chances. “I assumed that the show wouldn’t do well and not because it wasn’t made well or anything. But this had 11 newcomers and nobody had heard of us, plus this was the remake of a well-received international hit (Elite). I thought either people would troll us or they would ignore us and we’ll go into oblivion,” says the actress.
‘Was scared to talk about intimate scenes with my mom’
Class is full of intimate sequences with Ayesha’s character involved in her fair share of raunchy and intimate moments. The actress says she was comfortable with doing all that on screen but found it challenging to tell about it to her mother and grandparents. “I was very comfortable with that. The intimacy on Class is levelled up when it comes to Indian shows but we have foreign counterparts that we have all watched. I was always comfortable. The scariest part of all of it was breaking it to my mom and grandparents,” says Ayesha with a laugh. In the end, she made her mother watch Elite, the original Spanish show Class is based on and that prepared her for what is to come. “Now, she is a fan,” beams Ayesha.
‘Now I have the pressure of knowing I’ll be watched’
Class season 2 has been greenlit and work has begun on it. Talking about the journey of her character Yashika and expectations from the season, Ayesha says, “For me, the biggest challenge will always be having enough empathy for the character of Yashika. She is supposed to the vamp of the show but it was surprising for me, how much she was loved in season 1. So, now living up to that love will be a challenge. Now, I have the pressure of knowing I’ll be watched.”
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 "Class was Ayesha Kanga's breakthrough project")
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