How Did Priyanka Mattoo Navigate Hollywood from Kashmir to L.A.?
Two decades ago, Priyanka Mattoo made a life-altering decision to leave Michigan for California. At the time, she was grappling with unrequited love and a lack of passion for her newly earned law degree.
Opting to follow a friend to Los Angeles, Mattoo’s journey began in a city that would shape her into a prominent figure in the entertainment industry.
“L.A. has shaped who I am,” Mattoo says.
The city’s lively atmosphere helped her make close friends, enjoy the local food, and have an exciting social life with many parties. Los Angeles gave her the vibrant and varied opportunities she was looking for.
Initially, Mattoo worked as a talent agent at UTA and WME, where she represented new comedy writers and actors. She often attended red carpet events and afterparties in Hollywood.
However, her career changed direction, and she wrote a memoir called Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones, which describes her life moving through five countries and 32 homes.
The memoir starts with the tragic story of her family’s home in Kashmir being destroyed during the conflict there. As refugees, Mattoo and her family moved between India and Saudi Arabia before eventually settling in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
She grew up and went to school there, deciding to study in Italy for a year instead of following her parents’ plan for her to become a doctor. Later, she earned a law degree.
Her story includes falling in love with filmmaker Rodney Rothman, who worked on “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” She also moved from being a talent agent to a producer, working with Jack Black at their production company, Electric Dynamite.
Despite her success, Mattoo faced many challenges, including sexism in Hollywood. Male colleagues often treated her unfairly and focused on her appearance instead of her skills, which pushed her to look for more creative and fulfilling work.
Leaving her agent job, Mattoo turned to production and writing. In 2018, she made “The Homestay,” a short film now being adapted into a feature by Likely Story, the production company behind “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
She also founded Earios, the first all-female podcast network, and co-hosted “Foxy Browns,” a beauty and wellness podcast, during the pandemic. Her current project, “Harbinder,” is a detective procedural for CBS featuring an Indian American protagonist.
Mattoo’s path to becoming a memoirist involved significant introspection.
Inspired by modern South Asian voices like Ali Sethi, Sarah Thankam Mathews, and Neel Patel, she began writing essays on parenting, Hollywood, and cultural identity for notable publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Times. These essays eventually evolved into her memoir.
Reflecting on her career, Mattoo describes it as highly unusual but emphasizes that each turn was crucial to her development as a writer. “My career path has been extremely unusual,” she says. “But the last thing I want people to take away from it is that it has been a series of failures; without the five or six turns I made, I doubt I’d be the writer I am today.” Writing, she concludes, feels right, and she is currently working on another essay collection with Knopf.
Source: LA Times