In the latest instalment of Citizen Femme’s Out of Office series, Anita Rani doesn’t just reflect on a career, she reframes what it means to take up space in an industry that hasn’t always made room for voices like hers.
Hers is a story that begins far from the polished studios of national television. Before the prime-time credits and the recognisable warmth of her voice on radio, Rani carved her way into broadcasting through persistence and instinct. Entering TV and radio as a northern, brown woman meant negotiating a landscape where, as she has previously noted, the “default” has long been something else entirely. What emerges in conversation is not bitterness, but clarity and a recognition that identity (ethnic, regional, female) is not a limitation, but a lens that enriches storytelling.
That perspective finds its most intimate expression in her participation in Race Across the World, where she travelled alongside her father. Crossing borders together, both literal and emotional, the experience became more than a television format. It was a return to heritage with quiet revelations that come when you step outside the structures of everyday life.
Travel, in fact, threads through much of Rani’s recent chapter. A self-declared year of saying “yes” opened the world in ways both expansive and deeply personal. From Iceland to India, with each journey came a freedom that comes from letting go of self-imposed limits. It’s this same spirit that fuels her new YouTube channel.
Yet perhaps the most resonant moment in the interview comes when Rani reflects on her memoir. For anyone who has ever felt like an outsider, whether because of race, background, gender, or geography, she talks about why she wrote a book and why it is a blueprint for possibility.
Here, Anita Rani sits down with Citizen Femme’s founder, Sheena Bhattessa, on the other side of the interview, talking overcoming hurdles, travels and moments of discovery.
Watch now!
We may earn a commission if you buy something from any affiliate links on our site.
