I am your biggest ally: Lisa Mishra’s message to the community this Pride Month, with a heartfelt new track, Teri Hoon

I think what inspired me to tell this story was my recent role in The Royals. I played a really confident and powerful queer character who falls in love with a much softer, newly questioning queer woman, and I was kind of just in this mood to explore more about what love like that could be. So I wrote this very tender and beautiful love song that sort of captures the essence of the two characters from the series.

It was very personal for me, because, of course, I was just generally a hopeless romantic. I love love songs and I love ballads, and I feel like we don’t hear any powerful female-only ballads these days, let alone ones that are fully instrumentally driven without any digital production. So I wanted to capture this beautiful love story in a very raw and fully live instrumental sense.

I do tend to blend genres and emotions a lot, and I think the only creative difference about the queer love ballad was to write it from the perspective of a woman to another woman. We just had to change the genders. But I also wanted to convey it more tenderly. I think the love between two women has a different sort of power. It’s not as overt and robust as it is between other people. I think women convey their emotions much more differently and more emotionally, but in a measured, quiet and well-thought out way, even when the emotions are big.

The response has been overwhelming. Most people’s connection point is with the lyrics, which were wonderfully written by Shayra Apoorva. She's an incredible female songwriter, and she totally captured everything I wanted in this love story perfectly.

What drew me to this particular role was being able to play a queer character, for sure. I think there’s a complexity to this love story that we don't get to see a lot on screen. I got to play the character who’s very out and proud. And my counterpoint, Kavya, played the more questioning queer character who was on this journey to figure out our queerness. It was really fascinating to me that we got to dive into such meaty roles, and hopefully, we did it justice.

Expressing emotion through music is very deeply personal, because it's your words, your songs, your stories, whereas in acting, we're given the script, we're directed by somebody. The producer has a lot at stake. The lighting guy is involved; the hair and makeup people are involved. When you're a musician, you have to convey all of these emotions very raw, whether it's a live performance, whether you're in the music video, or just tracking it in the studio.

When you know you get to be on a Dharma Production for Call Me Bae. As an NRI, I grew up watching Dharma Productions!  And then I got to be on a Netflix show!  I remember, 15 years ago, picking up DVDs from the Netflix box in Chicago, and now I'm on a series on that same platform! All of these moments are very surreal to me.

I just try to remain as authentic as possible in the way that I deliver my work. The world is pretty global right now, and we've gotten good at accepting all types of people, and as long as I stay authentic and do a good job as a musician and as an actor, I don't have much else to worry about.

I think visibility is really important in queer stories. The more visible these stories are, the more de-sensitised the public is to the love between two queer people. I think we all love deeply and profoundly, and the more we have these represented on screen, and the less sensitive society gets to them, it becomes normalised.

My dream project is something like Cocktail, an incredible script by Imtiaz Ali, incredibly well directed by Homi Adajania, and what an incredible cast and some of the best music. I would love to do something like that.

The characters that excite me the most are empowered women in positions that are very high up, that command a lot of respect. I like introducing audiences to women that are forward thinking, progressive and have a lot of control and agency.

What influences my artistry most deeply is the consumption of film. I think people don't realise how much I watch in terms of content, and how I've grown up in a house watching films and television. My parents are big film and television aficionados. We've always been exposed to the highest level of cinema. And I'm not surprised that I ended up pursuing acting so seriously, because it is a medium that's given a lot of respect in my home.

I nurture my creativity by honestly relaxing and tuning it out. I don't watch and consume media when I want to relax, I just kind of zone out and sit empty and don't clutter my mind. The more I experience real life, the less attached I am to a screen, the better I look at the screen as research, and once in a while, as a getaway, if I'm at a theatre. But other than that, I like my solitude, and I like my quiet.

I want to be seen as somebody that pushed for visibility for women in the music space, equality for women in the music space, I pushed for visibility for queerness in screens, for visibility and empowerment of women on screen as prominent leads, not side actors. I want woman to be the center of the narrative.

My message to all people reading this is that music is the big love of my life, and it feels like breathing to me. And I wish everybody could have that same experience of music, where it brings them calm and it brings them respite, and the only way that we continue to nurture spaces like this and love music and consume music is to support independent artists. There’s more than enough money in films and in labels, but the true art is being made by people who don't have that kind of funding and backing. So support independent artists; consume music and enjoy it as if it was as easy as breathing air. But remember how badly independent artists need your support.

And of course, it's the Pride month. I would love to say to the community that I am your biggest ally and supporter. I always have been. I've been raised to see love as love and nothing other than that. I hope we nurture safe spaces for the queer community, and I hope they feel safe with an ally like me.