TV INTERVIEW: JANINA GAVANKAR
A Policewoman With A Dark Secret in ABC's Supernatural Drama 'The Gates'
After making relatively substantive appearances in popular television series such as The L Word, Stargate Atlantis, Grey’s Anatomy and NCIS, Janina Gavankar is primed to take on her next big role as a police officer in ABC’s latest summer series The Gates.
Hailed as “a sexy new drama where everyone has something to hide,” The Gates replaces Brothers and Sisters in the prime-time Sunday evening slot and is the latest production to jump on the “vampires are young and hot” bandwagon. With Janina taking on Leigh Turner, a cop with a dark secret, The Gates also stars Prison Break’s Frank Grillo alongside The Prince and Me’s Luke Mably and 90210’s Chandra West. Ultimately, a show that is as much about suburban life as it is about secretive, double-life living vampires (and other goblins), Janina thinks the show’s fan-base will really take a liking to her character. Even more, she tells Buzzine in an exclusive sitdown interview that The Gates, a supernatural crime drama series, has something for everyone.
“I play a cop with a secret. It’s the dopest secret, by the way. I’m not telling you what it is, not even off the record, but you start to see stuff after the third episode. So really watch the third episode, because that is the first time my character gets to flex. You really get to see stuff,” Janina excitedly said as she comfortably sat inside an egg-shaped room in Los Angeles’s Media District. “We deal with so many universal themes, like addiction. I mean, imagine someone with an addiction; now imagine being a vampire and sucking someone’s blood, but you are just trying to be normal. That must suck.”
As for keeping the secret of Leigh Turner close to her vest, ABC leaked a little tidbit about what to expect from Janina’s character on the show, describing the attractive police officer as “sharp, focused, and good at her job. However, when it comes to matters of the heart, she has suffered from some really bad luck.”
Actually, it would seem as if everyone featured on The Gates — which was written by Richard Hatem and Grant Scharbo and shot in Shreveport, Louisiana — had to deal with 'some really bad luck.' “You think everyone is normal, but actually, some of the characters are vampires, werewolves…or creatures that go bump in the night,” Janina explains about the show.
Oddly enough, Janina finds she has a lot in common with Leigh Turner. Okay, Janina is not a police officer, nor is she hiding the true identity of who she really is. Last we checked, Janina is a normal red-blooded human being. Yet, what Janina finds interesting about Leigh Turner are the life experiences her character has lived through. The Indian-American actress from Joilet, Illinois told Buzzine there are a lot of similarities between Janina and Leigh in terms of where each person is in their respective lives: “Generally, I get hired to play people very different from who I am. They have totally different life experiences from what I have. I generally have to wipe my slate clean and become the character that’s created,” Janina confessed about the dichotomy of who she is in real life and who she portrays on screen. This is a character that is going through things that I have gone through. There is overlap (between her life and mine).”
“To call myself a (role model) is a bit presumptuous. It’s hard enough to make it. To put that kind of pressure on myself would be debilitating,” she humbly yet emphatically told Buzzine. “Looking back at my work so far, I feel extremely lucky to be one of the few of us that gets to play ethnically ambiguous people where the career I’ve been able to build so far has not been based on my ethnicity. It’s not about where my parents come from. My whole life has been like that, so it makes sense, but don’t think I take that lightly, because I don’t.”
Yet, when it comes to ethnicity, Janina wishes people would take one’s background somewhat lightly, in that the cultural or racial roots of a human being should not be factored into his or her ability to pursue the art form of their choice: “People who aren’t ethnic are just actors. There are not ‘white actors.’ Why do we have to be Indian actors? Why do we have to be Asian actors? Why do we have to be black actors? Why can’t we all just be actors?” she rhetorically asked. “I’m just trying to be good at what I do, and it should be good enough.”
As for her observations on her own ethnic background, Janina made some very interesting observations about being Indian. While she does not want to be labeled as a role model, a pioneer, or a trailblazer, the fact of the matter is there are indeed so few people with darker shades of brown who are guiding lights to future generations of Indians living in North America but who seek a career in Hollywood or the arts.
“When you go to India, everyone can sing their asses off, and music and the arts is such a huge part of our culture,” she optimistically told Buzzine, adding that there will indeed be a day where people stop paying attention to the increasing number of Indian-Americans in the acting profession and just expect people hailing from that ethnicity to always be a driving force as actors, musicians and artists.
While she refuses to single herself out as a role model, she does admit that she is part of a generation who instigated change for the better, therefore allowing for generations after her to justify seeking a life as an artist at a much earlier stage of their lives, all without having the backlash of trying to keep it a secret from their parents or seek a career in more a secure profession such as law or medicine.
“We are the generation who has been living a double-life — we’re doctors, lawyers, engineers, but we’re also artists. I think the next generation is going to be able to show their parents that this is an honorable profession and you can actually make a living. It’s really, really hard, but it is still worthy of a life, if you are dedicated to it.”
Janina herself has not lived a double-life — certainly not in the manner that Leigh Turner has. But she has indeed worked hard and dedicated herself to the acting profession, and all that hard work and dedication is paying off, as she is now the latest in a string of Indian-American actors to find themselves taking on meaty roles on network television.
Be sure to catch Janina as Leigh Turner on 'The Gates', which premieres on June 20, 2010 at 10:00 p.m. EST/PST on ABC.
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