Archie Panjabi

Actor

• Born: May 31, 1972
• Place of Birth: London, England

Contribution: Archie Panjabi is a British actor of Indian descent, best known for her Emmy Award–winning role on the CBS hit legal drama The Good Wife.

Background

Archana Kaur Panjabi was born on May 31, 1972, in the Edgware section of London, England, where she grew up. (Panjabi changed her first name to Archie to avoid confusion with pronunciation.) Her parents, restaurateur Govind and special-needs teacher Padma Panjabi, had both come to England in the early 1970s from India, though the family originates in what is now the Sindh province of southeastern Pakistan. Along with her brother, Ashwin, Panjabi was raised in a traditional Sikh household and spent part of her youth living in Mumbai, the most populous city of India.

Panjabi dreamed of becoming an actor from the time she was a girl. While many members of her conservative Sikh community considered acting a shameful profession, her parents encouraged her to follow her dreams, so long as she receive a proper education first.

When Panjabi was a teenager, she took part in a local theater festival, where she placed first in four categories and received an award for being the most versatile performer. Those honors gave her the validation to pursue an acting career in earnest.

After graduating from secondary school, Panjabi attended Brunel University, located in the Uxbridge section of West London. While there she took weekend acting classes on the side. She earned a degree in management studies from Brunel in 1996.

Career

Panjabi appeared in a handful of British television productions before landing the part of the rebellious daughter in Damien O’Donnell’s independent comedy East Is East (1999). The film, about an Anglo-Pakistani family living in England in the early 1970s, received widespread acclaim and awards, and launched for Panjabi’s professional acting career.

Panjabi’s profile rose considerably with her next film role in the 2002 British comedy Bend It Like Beckham. She costarred as Pinky Bhamra, the older bride-to-be sister of Keira Knightly’s friend and soccer teammate Jess (played by Parminder Nagra). The film became an international sleeper hit and Golden Globe winner, while Panjabi won a BBC Mega Mela Award for her performance. Also in 2002 Panjabi won critical notice for her role in the British four-part miniseries White Teeth, a drama based on a novel by Zadie Smith.

In 2004, in addition to appearing in regular roles on the BBC television series Sea of Souls and Grease Monkeys, Panjabi starred as the title character in Yasmin, an award-winning drama written by Simon Beaufoy, about a young Muslim woman living in England in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The following year Panjabi made her Hollywood debut as the British diplomat Ghita Pearson in Fernando Meirelles’s highly acclaimed political thriller The Constant Gardner (2005), which starred Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz and was based on the novel by John le Carré.

Panjabi next played Gemma, Russell Crowe’s brash personal assistant, in A Good Year (2006), a romantic comedy directed by Ridley Scott. While the film was widely panned, many critics singled out Panjabi for her performance. In 2007 Panjabi portrayed the real-life Indian American journalist Asra Nomani in Michael Winterbottom’s well-received A Mighty Heart, which starred Angelina Jolie as Marianne Pearl, the wife of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The film premiered at that year’s Cannes Film Festival, where Panjabi received the Chopard Trophy.

Panjabi made her American television debut in 2009 when she was cast as Kalinda Sharma, a shrewd, sassy, and sexually ambiguous private investigator, in the CBS legal drama The Good Wife, which centers on a housewife (Juliana Margulies) who takes over her incarcerated husband’s scandal-plagued Chicago law firm. She landed the role after impressing the show’s creators, Robert and Michelle King, with her screen test and after receiving a glowing recommendation from executive producer Ridley Scott.

Debuting on CBS in September 2009, The Good Wife, which costarred Christine Baranski, Josh Charles, and Chris Noth, became an immediate hit, and Panjabi was catapulted into the mainstream spotlight. For her portrayal of Kalinda, a fan favorite known for her signature knee-high boots, provocative garb, and intriguing storylines, Panjabi earned three consecutive Emmy Award nominations (2010–12) for outstanding supporting actress in a drama series, winning the award in 2010. She also received a 2013 Golden Globe nomination for the role. She stayed with the show for all but its seventh and last season.

Some of Panjabi’s other credits include the British comedy film The Infidel (2010) and the BBC crime drama series The Fall, which premiered in May 2013. In the latter she plays Reed Smith, a pathologist who is hired to assist in a murder investigation. She also appeared in the NBC crime drama series Blindspot from 2016 to 2018, playing Nas Kamal, the head of a secret division of the National Security Agency. In 2021, Panjabi lent her voice to Depa Billaba in the animated series Star Wars: The Bad Batch. In 2024, Panjabi announced that she would be joining the fifteenth season of the long-running television series Doctor Who.

Impact

With The Good Wife, Panjabi joined the ranks of an exclusive group of actors of Indian descent to have won an Emmy Award. As part of an emerging trend of Indian characters on American network television in the late 2000s, Panjabi’s performance as Kalinda, which critics described as one of the most multifaceted characters ever to grace the small screen, was credited with helping to transcend traditional media stereotypes about Indians. While largely playing supporting characters throughout her career, Panjabi has built a reputation as a scene-stealer with a commanding presence.

Personal Life

Panjabi divides her time between London and New York City, where The Good Wife is filmed. She has been married to Rajesh Nihalani, a bespoke tailor and businessman, since 1998.

Bibliography

“Actress Archie Punjabi Signs On with Rotary to Eradicate Polio.” PR Newswire US. PR Newswire Assoc., 23 May 2013. Web. 23 Aug. 2013.

"Archie Panjabi." Internet Movie Database, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0659544/bio/?ref‗=nm‗ov‗bio‗sm. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Blake, Heidi. “Emmy Awards 2010: How Archie Panjabi Was Told Not to Pursue Her Dreams.” Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 31 Aug. 2010. Web. 5 Aug. 2013.

Hale, Mike. “A Gallery of Masters: Eight Actors Who Turn Television into Art.” New York Times Magazine 11 Sept. 2011: 28. Print.

Kaufman, Joanne. “‘What Would Kalinda Do?’” Wall Street Journal 1 Sept. 2010: D5. Print.

Kronke, David. “Archie Panjabi: Brit Has No Problem Being the Other Woman in ‘Good Wife.’” Daily Variety 1 Oct. 2009: A3. Print.

Lacob, Jace. “The Good Wife: Archie Panjabi Talks about Playing Kalinda.” Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast Co., 14 Feb. 2011. Web. 23 Aug. 2013.

Panjabi, Archie. “A Conversation with Archie Panjabi.” Interview by Shivani Vora. New York Times. New York Times Co., 13 Sept. 2011. Web. 5 Aug. 2013.

Panjabi, Archie. Interview by Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell. CBS This Morning. CBS, 20 Sept. 2012. Television.

Sears, Neil. “Triumph for the British Star Who Was Told: Acting is Beneath You.” Daily Mail [London, UK]. Associated Newspapers, 31 Aug. 2010. Web. 5 Aug. 2013.

Triggs, Charlotte. “Archie Panjabi: Better than Good.” People 4 Apr. 2011: 100. Print.