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Karen Johal is a British south Asian actor who hails from Birmingham in the UK. In 2014 Karen moved to New York City to train professionally at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduating in 2017 she was subsequently cast in The Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar directed by Oskar Eustis, and soon after Karen performed on stage at Carnegie Hall for Orchestra Moderne in The Journey to America.
With notable leading performances in Welcome to Thebes, Truest, Satisfaction, Good Fit and Lysistrata Karen has received significant recognition for her work as an actor. Returning to the UK in 2019, she starred in a production of Mismatch at The Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Duncan MacMillan’s People, Places and Things and a regional production of the Tony Award-winning play Blackbird where she was praised and called “a rising star” by critics. Her screen credits include the lead in the Amazon Prime film Frank’s Plan, the award winning short film Man on the Phone, and the 2017 YouTube Series Everyone Else Has. Karen will return to our screens in March 2023 in the upcoming BBC television series Phoenix Rise.
Yes definitely, it’s been a multitude of things. There is a strange reality to living as a working actor, it can be really unstable and grounding at the same time. Nothing in life is straightforward, so my whole journey has been about getting through each day, and about choosing acting as a career that’s worth putting my time into.
There isn’t a final destination to this journey in the way that people might think, it’s about continuing for me, making sure that I am committed to what I am doing and that I am having a good time while doing it.
There have been struggles for sure over the years and I have had a tougher time than most, but I have worked pretty consistently since graduating, so overall everything has sort of found a healthy balance.
My resilience and persistence has really paid off to get me to where I am now, and I am so lucky and grateful. All the rejections and the criticisms get mixed together with the good stuff, and I have tried to take everything and just use it to get me to where I want to go.
When I first graduated, I was living and working in New York at the time, so I didn’t have a sense of how different the industries were. My first job was a starring role in a play called Camel written by Charly Clive, where I played an American character. So, for the next 7 or so years I was working in the US doing readings, theatre shows and short films. Most of the time I would play American characters, and it wasn’t until I moved back to the UK because of the pandemic that I realised how different the industries are.
The US is naturally a bigger place, there’s a lot more going on because there’s New York, LA, Atlanta and many more places to work, whereas in the UK most of the work is in London, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just means there’s a limit to how much is being made and where you have to go to get the work.
Then when you take into account how much work there is, and then how much of that work is for actors of colour, by default the US is just working on a much larger scale. Another difference is getting representation – I struggled after graduating in New York to get seen by the right agencies. It always felt like a really difficult process that I was totally mystified by, and I could never grasp how to put myself forward, but in the UK our casting database Spotlight makes it super easy.
During the pandemic I reached out and set up meetings with agents and it all felt really organic. I am not sure if it’s still as difficult now as it was then in the US, but I always felt like getting an agent there was next to impossible, and that may not be everyone’s experience, but I found it much easier to get an agent in the UK.
I think so, I found my footing sort of mid 2021 after I signed with my agency Shack Artists. I tried to get myself together and figure out what the UK had to offer. The industry is up and running again, which I am so grateful for, but I also don’t want to forget what it was like when it all went away.
During the pandemic my career prospects disappeared when the industry shut down. It really forced me to do a complete overhaul on what was important to me and what I wanted to do. I discovered a lot of what was holding me back was my own anxiety and fear around whether my work was good enough, or if I was good enough.
I came out of the other side with this new sense of confidence because I had worked on those things. There are more important things in life than your career, and sometimes focusing on finding a healthy balance can really help your work as an actor.
I found self-tapes really hard at the beginning of the pandemic, but given the circumstances, I had the time to work on a process where now I feel good about what I am doing. I actually love doing self-tapes now! I prefer them to in person auditions.
I’ve always found the idea of trying to show my entire personality in an audition really hard, and with a self-tape, you can just focus on the work. It also means I can be seen for things that are cast across the globe. I’ve had more auditions for the US during this last year than I did when I lived there!
I have been so fortunate to have more than a few favourite moments. As long as I am having a good time, I know this is the right career for me! My first lead role in a commercial was for TK Maxx for their annual Christmas Advert in 2021. The set was amazing, I met some really great people, and I worked with Raine Allen Miller, who recently directed the film Rye Lane which is out later this year.
I also played the lead role in Blackbird by David Harrower, it’s such a great play and was such a hard role to take on. It had a lingering effect on me in a way that I didn’t expect, after working in theatre for so many years. It was also the first time my family in the UK got to see me perform, which was really special.
I’ve also been featured and interviewed by some amazing people, and have had great reviews in the HuffPost and The Express and Star UK. I was also interviewed on the radio by the BBC in 2020 about my work in New York, and in June 2022 I got to work for the BBC on Phoenix Rise which was a wonderful full-circle moment, so I have a lot of things to be proud of!
Yes, Phoenix Rise is out on 21st March on BBC iPlayer, I play a character called Noreen. I am excited for people to see it. The BBC are a worldwide organisation and a British Institute so to work for them for the first time was a huge milestone in my career so far. The show was filmed in Coventry and also stars Paul Nicholls, Zita Sattar and Tyler Fayose.
I am heading to Germany in March to play the lead role of Zarina in The Who and the What by Ayad Akhtar. I did a scene from this play for my showcase at drama school, so it feels strangely serendipitous to revisit this play almost six years later. I have never been to Germany before either, so I am really looking forward to being out there for 3 months to work on such a great role. The show starts on 6th April and runs until 3rd June at The English Theatre of Hamburg.
I will also be featured in the MTV short film See Me directed by Sindha, which premieres in March for International Women’s Day. It was such a fun shoot, and the concept focuses on how awesome and resilient we ALL are!
@karen.johal Instagram
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