Anjana Vasan Just Wants Stanley Tucci to Cook for Her

The past three years have been good to Amina, the introverted scientist in London with rock-star dreams played by Anjana Vasan on the Peacock series “We Are Lady Parts.”

Amina completed her Ph.D. in microbiology. She landed a job in stem-cell research. And she underwent a glow-up befitting the lead guitarist of an indie punk band made up of five Muslim women.

Farewell, shrinking violet. Amina is in her “villain era” now.

“She’s found this confidence, and it’s almost like a new pair of shoes that she’s breaking in,” Vasan, 37, said in a video interview. “She hasn’t quite found her landing yet.”

The sitcom’s three-year hiatus was also good for Vasan — born in India, raised in Singapore and now living in London — who won a Olivier Award in 2023 for her performance as Stella in a revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire.”

“We were determined for a show like this not to just be this anomaly, that the show with five women of color at the helm had to have another iteration — it had to go even deeper,” she said before explaining her fascination with YouTube wormholes, “Veep” on repeat, Townes Van Zandt’s music and the stationery she assembles before taking on a new job.

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

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The Art of Zarina Hashmi

Zarina was the first time I’d seen someone’s art and gone, “Oh, wow, I love this.” Then I realized she was of Indian heritage herself. So much of her art is about borders and home and memory and place. There was something about a simple piece of art that spoke to me in a really visceral way.