Chapter 1: How did Bela Bajaria transition from cashier to Chief Content Officer?
Indian girl, British accent, grew up in a big extended Indian family. And when I moved here, first I got teased a lot because I had a British accent, even though I wish I had kept it. That you kept it. Somebody should have told me way better to keep it as you get older.
Oh, what's your story? Don't you dare be sour. Clap for Stephanie and B.
All right, so thank you so much, Bella Fajeri, for doing this podcast with us. And I'd like to just start off, we don't normally do introductions anymore, but for the audience who doesn't know, how does someone go from being a cashier at the car wash to becoming the first woman of color to oversee a major U.S. television studio when you were named president of Universal Television.
And now you're responsible for one of, if not the largest budget for content in Hollywood. This is your story. The name of the pod is What's Your Story? And we just want to learn all about you.
Chapter 2: What lessons did Bela learn from being fired?
Oh, great. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. So how do you... How does one tell us everything? That's a lot. Yes, exactly. Well, I'm not sure I'd say the biggest budget in Hollywood. Maybe the world. In the world. Yes, exactly. As far as I'm going to come to entertainment. You know, I think... How does that happen? It's... You know, it's an interesting story.
And there's so much in retrospect that I learned from those cashier days.
Chapter 3: How did Bela's multicultural background influence her career?
And actually when I was a cashier at a car wash was my parents' car wash. So I was born in London. I'm Indian. And my parents are Indian but from East Africa. And so I lived in Zambia when I was younger, lived in London. And we moved to the U.S. in the late 70s. And it was very American Dreamtime, right?
And your parents moved slightly before you, right?
And my parents moved a few years before I did. Not intentionally. They thought they were going to come and figure out, America, where to live, what to do. And they had the idea that they would move to Los Angeles and open car washes. That was really the idea. And Los Angeles really was picked instead of New York or New Jersey or a lot of other places that had a lot of Indians.
Chapter 4: What is the significance of storytelling in Bela's work?
was because my dad really wanted to recreate that Africa lifestyle. Climate, weather, ocean, amazing things for him in Tanzania. And so Los Angeles was it. And I'm very thankful to him. This beautiful 80 degrees that we're living in March is great. And that was really kind of come to America, American dream, opportunity. And at that point, we were living in London and my parents moved.
A couple years before I did. Really, they thought they were just going to move a few months before I did. And then was your mom pregnant at the time? My mom was not my mom. My brother was six months old. And so they took my brother with them. And I was very close to my grandparents and to my mom's older brothers and sisters. And so I stayed in the UK as they got settled.
Chapter 5: How does Bela view the relationship between WWE and Netflix?
And then I just couldn't get a visa.
Okay.
So then became sort of the few years that I didn't see them because if they left, they couldn't get back in and I couldn't sort of go, you know, if I didn't get a visa. The interesting thing is as a parent now, I can't imagine, right, not being with my kids during that age. But – I was the first and oldest grandchild. Right. So I lived with all my aunts and uncles and my grandparents.
So I was completely dove in on. You were very loved. Yes. I was loved beyond. So again, you think way back when, right? No FaceTime and phone calls were expensive. So it was really like every couple of weeks where I would get on the phone and talk to my parents.
Chapter 6: What does Bela identify as the key to successful content creation?
And you were like five to eight? I was like four, yeah, like four to like eight. Like four and a half to like eight. And the interesting thing was, though, I really was so spoiled and so taken care of and so left. So I don't remember... It being traumatic as you, what I would imagine now, where I would look back and go, oh, that must have been really traumatic. But I don't know.
I was so taken care of that I didn't really.
Well, that's good.
And so much like maternal, paternal affection and care from so many people. And I'm still very close to all those aunts and uncles because they raised me.
Are they still in the UK or are they here now?
Besides one aunt, everybody else, you know, moved. Oh, that's great. Yeah.
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Chapter 7: How does Bela define her leadership style?
Yeah, yeah. So it was great because when I got to move, then I got to, like, they all kind of came with. So it was fun because then I had all my community together, which was great because then I had everybody who really, you know, really took great care of me and was very supportive. So that was fun.
So when I moved here, you know, there was so much that was really impactful about filming and TVing. Because when I moved to L.A., Indian girl, British accent, grew up in a big extended Indian family, had parents that were self-employed, so they weren't in corporate America with access to lots of different people. It was really kind of a big Indian community.
And when I moved here, first I got teased alongside a British accent, even though I wish I had kept it.
That you kept it. Right?
Somebody should have told me way better to keep it as you get older. But when you're nine, you can't. The sort of brown Indian and the British accent was a bit too much. And so something had to go. The brown was obviously not going anywhere.
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Chapter 8: What future projects does Bela envision for Netflix?
And so I would go home every single day after school and I would watch film and TV. And it was to do a couple of things. One, to get rid of my accent. This is why I sound like I'm on a TV show in the U.S., basically.
What were you watching?
Oh, I watched so many things. I watched I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched and Gomer Pyle. Did you try to wiggle your nose? I know. Oh, my God. All the time. Yeah. I could never get it. I can't. I can't. I can't do the eyebrow thing. I can scrunch it.
I could do the eyebrow thing, but I have too much Botox now.
I used to be able to do it. Oh, see. I used to try to do the twitchy thing.
Yeah.
Dallas and Dynasty, like, we'd actually watch, like, as a family. I always say, like, it's like, you know, it feels very big Bollywood, a lot of melodrama, big multi-generational kind of story. But I... So I would watch it to learn American culture because it was very different than growing up in an Indian family.
And even though nobody looked like me on TV, it was sort of a really interesting way to kind of understand a little bit more about American culture. You know, and ultimately like John Hughes movies, which were very defining to me about trying to really understand kind of high school kind of in the U.S., But the one thing, though, I was always struck by, and I remember it.
I don't even know what it meant to me, but I remember that I knew that we all watched the same TV shows and movies. So when I went to school, right, we all watched B-Witch. We all watched Brady Bunch. And it was the one thing, it didn't matter what our background was, right? We were connected by this thing. And that definitely made me feel less weird, right, that we were connected by this.
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