“Probably people don’t realize how impacted the Indian community has been by Covid-19 and border closure” says Julia Parnell, director of Arranged

Arranged series 3 is back on TV Three, despite all the disruptions caused mainly due to the pandemic and border closure, Julia Parnell, director of the series, gets candid with us and tells what makes her come back for more on this series.

Having dedicated a lot of her career in culture stories, Julia has always wanted to talk about one’s own identity and diversity that exists in Aotearoa. She wants to try and honor, uplift, an original home culture with what is integrated into an Aotearoa culture.

“It has always fascinated me, I was making this series called Both Worlds; and we did a story where a young woman was having an arranged marriage, that sort of opened my eyes to it,” says Julia.

She mentions how empowering it is for people. Picking up her clues from there; she set out to make something that would help a broad audience to better understand what love, marriage and family is to Indian culture.

Not too long ago, culturally arranged marriages were a prime subject matter when they were pointed out as some ‘Bollywood’ (Indian films) drama by a political party leader. Also, from immigration’s point of view, the couple had to stay together for about 12 months to prove that their relationship is legitimate.

Julia is glad that she can put up a narrative that demeans those comments and stands for the age-old tradition of marriage that is very much prevalent even today.

“Politics is one thing, we are talking about human needs here, we are talking about centuries, millennial of cultural value and to just discredit that of it just being about immigration, politics or financial is a problem for me, and that I want people who ever they are to understand the human face behind the stories and headlines, and this season, has become so much about that,” explains Julia.

Though the project was funded at the end of the year 2019, the planning of it filming around 2020 summer time was squandered due to Covid-19 gripping the country beforehand.

She admits that it all got complicated, like in the previous seasons of Arranged, where the focus was weddings, this time they pivoted on singles looking for love. “We had a good rethink about how we were going to move forward...And I actually think this series is richer for it…people are more open.”

Something that Julia thoroughly enjoyed filming in Arranged and the culture it surrounds is about the families. The negotiation between the traditional and modern ideologies, where the parents support the idea of arranged because they had it in their times and at the same time acknowledge that they live in this place where their children have more open views - western ways of living.

Since the first episode was airing the next day to this interview, Julia said that she is really proud of launching her show this year and can’t wait for the audience to watch this series.

To conclude she says, “There goes a lot of commitment to produce such high-quality stuff, of course Covid has been the biggest challenge, probably people don’t realize how impacted the Indian community has been by Covid-19 and border closure.”

Further she adds that hopefully they have given a balanced view of the situation - that is a ‘now’ situation, it is a very immediate and current. People could feel for themselves, relating to challenges showcased in the series during covid times. And finding love in these small communities in New Zealand is not easy. - Vritti Parasher