Ambika Ascending

Over the summer, she juggled performances for Every Brilliant Thing and rehearsals for Porn Play simultaneously. Both productions center around dense plots and layered character arcs. “There’s no way I won’t come out of these plays a better actor,” she proclaims quietly. “With theater, you can’t rest on your laurels. It has to be there every single night.”

There’s a determination in her tone that makes it almost impossible to believe her breakthrough role was just three years ago. Before her performance in the critically acclaimed onscreen adaptation of This Is Going to Hurt, which unraveled the political issues in the UK’s National Health Service, Mod cut her teeth in comedy rather than drama school, frequenting the stand-up circuit and strengthening her hand at improv.

“Comedians hate themselves,” she notes, not quite joking. “I do think it’s often conducive to making really good comedy, being funny, being self-aware, being quick-witted, reading things and people and rooms. That’s a weird skill I feel like I’ve always had.”

Her move from Fringe comedy to drama has been deliberate – a mosaic of expression refined over time, giving her a presence that swings between moving and disconcertingly witty. You never quite know whether to laugh or cry. She says that in comedy, the stakes feel higher because the feedback is instant and “failure is more measurable,” whereas onscreen work, without that real-time response, leaves space for overthinking. “Laughter and tears are interconnected,” she reflects. “Comedy lowers the defenses so that feeling can land. The best comedy mines deep truth, like any art. Even if you’re not confessional, you’re refining truth, which is exposing.”

The change that Mod has gone through is visceral; you catch glimmers of it when she talks about what it took to arrive here. “Before my first big break I was ruthless,” she confides, “I was so scrappy and tenacious.” Juggling full-time jobs, gigs and short films, her expression sharpens when she recalls the survival mode she lived in to reach where she is today. “I had to work really hard to put my foot in the door and prove myself as someone who looks like me. It was almost like I had something overcome me. Like I was possessed during those years. Whatever that thing was, I don’t have it anymore, and I don’t know if I want it to ever come back.”

This feverish clarity of purpose has also served as her compass, allowing her to meet fame with intention rather than surrender. Her giddy and at times somber performance as Emma Morley in the Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls’ beloved One Day, one of the streaming service’s biggest shows of 2024, was a kind of baptism by spotlight, an initiation into the strange and surreal machinery of fame. She speaks of the show with warmth but also a sense of finality. “As time goes on, especially now I’m doing more theater, I’m ready to leave Emma behind.”

Earlier this year, she attended the Met Gala with Jonathan Anderson as an ambassador for Loewe. But beyond industry obligations, the pace of her ascent hasn’t quite aligned with the time it takes to adjust. “People forget the intricacies of the human underneath,” she says, half-teasing, “I want to go to Sainsbury’s without making a scene when I’m buying a cucumber.”

She grew up in Hertfordshire, a self-described wallflower shaped by shyness and the immigrant-parent push for excellence. She kept her head down and, as she puts it, “felt very detached from everything and everyone.” Then, with the distance of hindsight, she adds, “I always had this awareness that it was temporary. It didn’t matter. I needed to do well at school but there were bigger things waiting for me.”

Calling herself “very introspective, very cognitive and very introverted”, you can sense it in the way her eyes seem to absorb everything around her. A blessing and a curse, she says. “If I sit on the Underground, I’m aware of who’s clocked me, who’s looking, who’s talking, who’s maybe filming me on their phone. It’s overstimulating and overwhelming. It physically does something to me… That’s a big adjustment.”

She manages her hypersensitivity by leaning on her support system: friends, her boyfriend and family. “I’m trying to create a sense of safety where I can and adjust without giving up the life I want.” Even at parties, she admits, “I’m in the corner watching everyone interact and trying to navigate the social situation.”

Unwavering about maintaining her autonomy, she says, “There are so many parts of this job I’m not sure I’m cut out for. It’s about protecting myself. I take my work very seriously, but I don’t take myself very seriously, thank God,” she laughs. “Setting boundaries and remembering I don’t owe anyone anything is important. As a woman of color in this industry, you can feel like you have to be grateful all the time, grovel for everything, as if your being there is a miracle granted by the ‘uppers’. It’s not. I’m trying to stay comfortable in my choices and boundaries, even if I make the wrong ones.”

With personal relationships taking precedence over ambition, it’s little surprise that social media isn’t her favorite place. “After One Day, I had a terrible experience online,” she recalls. “Some day, I’d love to get rid of it altogether. It’s just not healthy to absorb everyone’s opinions about you. Sometimes I’m self-destructive and I’ll distract myself by scrolling, but it’s a hellscape.”

Her first major feature film, Sacrifice, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in September, and it marks a turning point in terms of her career and craft. Starring alongside Anya Taylor-Joy, Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek Pinault, John Malkovich and Charli XCX, the film is the first English-language feature by revered French director Romain Gavras. Describing it, with characteristic understatement, as “silly and quite fun” (a lighthearted take on a film that unites her with Hollywood heavyweights), she frames the last few years as an existential reckoning of sorts.

“I’ve reached a different stage in my practice where I’m asking myself: ‘What is the meaning of my work?’, ‘What is the meaning behind what I’m putting out into the world?’ As a Brown woman, you’re held to a higher standard. There’s less room to make mistakes. Sometimes it feels like you only have one chance, and if you mess up, you’re gone.”

As Mod’s internal world shifts, so does her external one. The fashion world has embraced her – she was shot by Juergen Teller for Loewe’s spring/summer 2025 campaign. “It’s an experiment… A journey,” she says with a smile of her relationship with fashion. Though she recoils at the thought of red carpets (“They’re terrifying”), she’s eager to use her platform with purpose. “I’d love to work with more Indian designers and wear more South Asian-inspired fashion on red carpets and really lean into my culture. That’s a big goal.”

When Mod was 20, she began a ritual of writing a letter to her future self, promising she’d do it every five years. It’s a habit she traces back to her family’s mix of superstition and discipline. “Five years ago, I was in the process of auditioning. The past five years have been huge for me, good and bad. I feel like a completely different person.”

On her 30th birthday, imminent after our meeting, she’ll write her next letter, and it’s as if the success of the past five years is catching up with her in real time. “It’s actually daunting to articulate all of it. It’s almost paralyzing when good things happen. In some ways, it’s worse.” She returns to a conversation she had with fellow actor Emma Thompson, who told her, “There’s no such thing as a career, there’s only what you do next.” Mod wants the choices she’s made – and the measured way she’s made them – to be felt. “I hope people see the real artistry. There’s a difference between stars and artists. Some are both. My pull is toward artistry.”

Incredible Women of 2024: actor Ambika Mod

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