Rakhee Thakrar

The Weight of British Television

Rakhee Thakrar was born in Leicester in 1984. There were no red carpets at first: she trained in the local theater of her hometown. Her parents ran a shop, and she learned the craft far from the glitter of London.

Her anonymity didn't last long.

In 2014, she joined the set of EastEnders. Playing Shabnam Masood demanded a physical and mental endurance that few actors can handle. She filmed highly dramatic scenes for twelve hours a day without blinking, under the pressure of a multimillion-viewer audience.

The storyline about the stillbirth in 2015 earned her respect from British critics. She received nominations at the British Soap Awards, but she chose to leave the show in 2016 to pursue different kinds of roles. It was a risky decision.

But the industry doesn't always move quickly. She spent some time in minor jobs and voiceover work before the opportunity came that would change her international profile.

And the gamble paid off.

From the Classroom to Big-Budget Film

In 2019, she put on Emily Sands' glasses in Sex Education. The Netflix series took her from the British niche and brought her to screens across half the world. Her role as an empathetic teacher was the necessary counterpoint to the teen chaos at the heart of the plot.

Simplicity is often the hardest thing to act.

She left the teen series after the third season to focus on projects of different scale. In 2022, she starred in the thriller Rules of the Game alongside Maxine Peake. She played Maya Nichols in a story about workplace toxicity and harassment.

Her move to mainstream film came with Wonka in 2023. She shared the screen with Timothée Chalamet, playing Lottie Bell. The production had a budget of 125 million dollars and marked her definitive entry into the ranks of major Hollywood studios.

She also voiced characters in audiobooks of Doctor Who and took part in the miniseries The Girl Before in 2021. Her approach is built on restraint. She prefers the camera to capture what she thinks rather than what she says, and that shows in her close-ups.

In 2024, she took part in filming the series My Lady Jane for Amazon Prime Video, playing Lady Frances Grey. The contract included a strict confidentiality clause covering the technical details of post-production and the use of visual effects on the London set.