‘Indian Matchmaking’ Star Aparna Shewakramani Talks New Book & Harsh Backlash

my next guest faced criticism when she starred on the hit netflix show indian matchmaking in 2022 with some labeling her as selfish and stubborn take a look i think there's many reasons i'm single so i've dated some wonderful men but i knew off the bat that they wouldn't work for my future i do want to give the person a chance and sometimes they see that they think they're really enjoying themselves and i just want to go home i'm like get me out of here is my 55 minutes up yeah i have a place it's a wine bar and we do 55-minute dates there and i sit in the same table it's right by the door and i literally give the person an hour that was a clip featuring aparna shaywa karmani she was misjudged and refused to let anyone tell her story well now in her new book she's unlikable and other lies that bring women down she is telling women to be unapologetic about who we are please welcome aparna shaywak hermani to the show upana thank you so much for joining us okay let's go back to the show cause um we know in reality tv there's always a villain we always know these days they want you know a flip over the table moment that's a part of the performance of it and i've heard behind the scenes that producers encourage people to be extreme and to act out loud for entertainment what kind of pressure were you feeling on this show to be a type i actually wasn't you know this was a very special season one of the show i think season ones are always special because no one knows what they're getting into and this was supposed to be a docu-series that documented my life and my experience with a matchmaker and so for me i was really just very focused on that relationship with the matchmaker is i thought if i could explain to her exactly what i wanted she would produce me the greatest guy and the pressure was the pressure i put on myself to actually make this work at all cost and i obviously did not do very well with that what do you mean by that you didn't do very well with that um i wasn't able to really express myself to her and set boundaries on camera a lot of people think that i did but if you look at what i said i was overly polite um she literally calls my dog a kitten at one point and instead of just looking at her and courteously i'm so polite because i'm just doing all of these things to please her or to be kind to her thinking she could turn around and be on my team and find me the perfect match all right so so your words on the show the clip that we just showed where you were describing what you wanted some people felt that um i i mean critics i guess felt that you were being was it too picky what was the i'm still confused by the beef here what was their issue with you a lot of people had a lot of issues um yeah they thought that i was being too picky too stubborn that i wasn't kind enough or open-hearted enough or open-minded enough um it was really strange comments from around the world um you know sema even says she doesn't like my talking pattern um a lot of people around the world didn't like that either they didn't even like the way i expressed myself were you discovering this in real time because obviously i have my phone usually somebody took it today we're live but usually i have my phone and occasionally i'll glance at social media and i see comments of what someone might say when the show started to air the documentary started to air when did you start to see the comments where people were not liking you took a day or two not long netflix is a special little beast where you can binge watch a whole show in a day and we were in the middle of a lockdown it was july of 2020 so it only took a day or two for the hate to start coming in it only took a day or two for the really lots of love to come in too you know they keep calling me the most polarizing character with polarization you get hate but man do you get a lot of love too so what i had to do was try to figure out how to navigate both of them were you feeling any pressure when you started to read the social media posts uh the negative ones i was feeling scared most of the time i mean people were literally driving by my house and stopping outside waiting for me to come in when the death threats came out i realized that my address is public record and people knew where i lived and that was most most of the fear like the real reality of am i safe and but otherwise i was just mostly just astounded and shocked because i didn't resonate with the aparna i saw on the screen and then all these people around the world hated her but it wasn't even me i didn't feel it was me anyway interesting because i know in your book you say someone asked me what my turning point was the moment i knew i had to take matters into my own hands candidly as you refer to it was the death threat so this this people were watching the show they were watching you describe what kind of person you wanted to date or be with and it resulted in death threats yeah it was a really scary moment for me where i realized that this was bigger than anything i could have ever imagined and some people somewhere hated me so much that they wanted to threaten my safety over my matchmaking experience that went south i mean for me i didn't even understand it i couldn't comprehend it up next arpana's mother joins us we talked more about what she says in this book lies that bring women down what are the lies that bring us down after the break [Applause] welcome back we've been talking about pressure with upon our shower come on a star of netflix's indian matchmaking she's joined by her mother joseka who also played a major role on the show thank you both for joining us aparna talk to me a little bit about the the pressure um a that came culturally with trying to explain to viewers around the world um how you view marriage how it seemed traditionally within your family what kind of pressure was that because you're taking people into your home but you're also explaining culture yeah you know what's interesting is i never even thought about that when i was taping the show or how to portray that i was just living out my own journey and my own truth well that's fascinating because the show is called indian matchmaking i would have first thought okay i'm explaining my culture because it's just not called matchmaking they zeroed in on that name for a reason so you never thought of it i didn't because i was just expressing myself as authentically as possible and i do identify as south asian and this is a part of my culture and i was trying to navigate dating a south asian man with a south asian matchmaker but for me it was never about trying to explain that to the world it was about going through the process to find a partner jessica what did you think once the show aired and all the pressure that came with agreeing to go on and then the fallout from it what did you think because you were heavily featured in it honestly we didn't expect that it would be so widely seen viewed all over the world and when she said she was um applying to a matchmaking show i thought it was the darcy series i thought there'd be a small kind of uh in a very specific crowd who would see it and then it became this thing that blew up and i just couldn't understand how that happened we were not expecting anything like this so it was a shock you played a part in kind of looking at the suitors or the potential people did you feel pressured to try to want her that dog is funny uh did you feel pressure um to to want her that's okay did you feel pressure for armpit to get married did you did you want her to you know uh i've never actually felt pressure to for her to get married um i just thought that it would come when it was going to come um at the right time um things would just fall into place i've always believed that so there wasn't that kind of pressure i just thought this was another avenue for her to um you know be have access to a matchmaker who we thought had global you know connections which we didn't have sitting in our little bubbles in houston so that was why i encouraged it well probably the show itself has been renewed for a couple of seasons do you regret having gone on never i think the decision i made was difficult i think i learned a lot but i think that i would do it all over again for the way that it opened me up to living my life on my terms and to really understanding that the best story i could tell was the one with my own words and with my own actions um i would do it all over again in a heartbeat um you did not find your husband on the show did not did that create any pressure after because then people say wait listen you couldn't find anybody on the show now what or did you like i didn't and i'm moving on well the matchmaker had a zero percent success rate so i think i was in good company with the rest of my cast mates who are also all i'm married and you know when there's a zero percent success rate we're all in this together my producers are in my ear they want to know what are you looking for i guess they want me to host a dating show now what are you looking for i trust you implicitly no do not trust me i was 48 i felt the pressure i just didn't crack under it but uh don't no but what do you what are you looking for now i want a real partner i want a teammate you know sema kept being like i'm gonna find you a husband and i'm like okay but also find me someone who's gonna support me and cheerlead me so i can support them and sure leave them like let's find a teammate in this and she just wanted to give me someone jolly tell me about the likability trap because clearly you don't care if they like you i can see that you have decided you're going to be your authentic self what do you believe um happens to us when we fall under the pressure of wanting to be liked especially on a national stage as you did yeah so the book's called she's unlikable and other lies that bring women down and the lies are that these reality shows often but even our workplaces and you know social media will tell us if you're a strong driven woman if you are content in your life if you are thriving in your career have a good family and friends and you want love you don't deserve it because you were too strong you were too driven and so for me those lies they just don't apply i think that we need to see women as more well-rounded and wanting all kinds of things for their life they can want career they can want love and they should be open and vulnerable to sharing that journey i know i am i'm doing that through the book i did that through the show and i'm going to continue to do that you

Channel: Tamron Hall Show

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Id: hK2ZyBdYj0g

Length: 11min 1sec (661 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2022