As part of TVNZ’s new Motherhood Anthology series, Give Me Babies is a kickass action-comedy about obstinately single Ari Chan-Kumar (played by Roxie Mohebbi) who goes to an illegal, underground MMA fight to win some quick cash. Why? To escape New Zealand and avoid her mother’s constant reminders of her childlessness. Eda Tang talks to the creative duo who brought the show to life.
It began as an idea during Covid when writer Ankita Singh अंकिता सिंह and director Calvin Sang, were walking their dog, Maple, in the park.
The Indian-Chinese couple wanted to tell a story that represented their hybrid ‘Chindian’ culture, but not be about it. “This is not a story about race,” says Calvin.
Ankita thinks it’s been done to death. “It’s still a really important subject matter but I feel like we’re at a point where the industry and the diaspora are at a point where we can start moving on and talking about other topics and issues… I just want to see more nuanced representations of multicultural New Zealand.”
The topic in question, motherhood, was a requirement in the TVNZ request for proposals. Ankita initially wrote off the idea because she wasn’t a mother and didn’t plan on being one. Soon she realised that this itself was a valid story about motherhood.
“I have a very complex relationship with my mother as a lot of Asian daughters do,” says Ankita. She thought about how she could tell this story and use her passion for MMA as a vehicle.
Ankita was always into fighting games, martial arts and anime, but her passion was reignited when she first strapped on some handwraps during her university years. “I just felt so fucking badass. Being a really unpopular nerdy kid, I just thought I wasn’t good at sports because people wouldn’t play with me.” At the same time, she was writing the stage show Basmati Bitch, which with this story, shares the essence of brown women doing martial arts.
While an action-comedy, the story is about the matriarchal exchange of power and hurt. “It’s about the experience of being mothered as well,” says Calvin. “We can entertain people and give them a good message, like hide the vegetables in the meat – is that what they say?”
I don’t know, but it sounds like something my mother would do.
As a mixed-race couple, it was important for Ankita and Calvin to cast across the pan-Asian diaspora. Calvin says, “oftentimes, if you’re making an Asian show in New Zealand, you silo the Middle Eastern one, the Pakistani one, the Chinese one.”
Give Me Babies not only normalises a pan-Asian cast but brings Asian actors out of the roles of takeaway owners, dairy owners and Uber drivers without making a fuss about it, he says. The cultural representation in the show was so important to Calvin and Ankita that cultural safety was part of their health and safety guidelines.
Just like Ankita and Calvin’s relationship, the show is about the camaraderie and the love between pan-Asian people. “Especially in the creative industry,” Ankita says, “we really have to rally around and uplift each other.”
“Indian and Chinese cultures have so much in common as well,” adds Ankita. “We love food, the colour red, weddings, filial piety, honour, martial arts and Buddhism.”
Throughout our conversation, the couple regularly alluded to the films Monkey Man and Everything, Everywhere All At Once as films that manage to acknowledge and let exist the ethnic backgrounds of characters without that being the focus of the story.
“I feel like there’s something in the zeitgeist,” says Ankita. “I think we’re becoming more empowered economically, socially and culturally. I feel like we’re just sick of being the model minority.”
• Give Me Babies releases on TVNZ and TVNZ+ from May 11
