Meet Anjali Bhimani

Today we’d like to introduce you to Anjali Bhimani.

Hi Anjali, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I’ve traveled all over the world thanks to my work as an actress in multiple media – I was raised in Orange County where I first discovered my love of theatre and acting and then went to Northwestern University in Chicago to get my degree. After that, I performed in Chicago and in regional theaters all over the US until one of the shows I did, Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses, moved to NY for an off-Bway and then Broadway run. I stayed in New York after that, continuing to do Broadway and Off-Broadway theatre, regional theatre, and opera, and then I began doing television.

My TV career took me back and forth between NY and LA, and as I started to fall more and more in love with L.A., I finally moved here in 2010. I began doing voiceover for animation and games in Los Angeles as well, and between my television and film work, my voiceover work, and then meeting and marrying my husband (Rick Barrio Dill, a touring musician & producer who has traveled practically the whole globe with his band, Vintage Trouble) I continued traveling all over the world but always coming back to L.A.

The international success of some of the projects I was a part of (Overwatch, Apex Legends, Ms. Marvel, and various appearances on Critical Role, among some of them) all enabled me to attend fan conventions all over the world. Then in 2022, I published my first book, I Am Fun Size, and So Are YOU!, and launched a new publishing company at the same time (mostly to help my friends who wanted to write books avoid the pitfalls I had navigated when I launched my company and my book).

In 2022, I also launched a new production company, Bad Auntie Productions, and through that company I’m producing a few great projects – a premium liveplay role-playing game series called DesiQuest that is dropping on November 14th and both a short and a series by writer Sabrina Besla, who is one of the most talented writers I’ve seen in a long time.

This year, my husband and I launched a new podcast production studio and network, SLAP Studios L.A. and SLAP the Network. It was his brainchild during the pandemic, and I’m so proud of what he has, and we have created together there. SLAP stands for Sonics, Love, Action, and Progress, and the #1 driving goal of the network and all of our shows there is that they have to do some kind of “good in the ‘hood” – whether to inform, to raise funds for charity, to give a voice to underrepresented communities, or to entertain, we are bringing artists together to speak their minds and sing their hearts loudly.

There’s so much more to share that I can’t thanks to NDAs, but the most important part of it is getting to share my life with my sweet husband and our dog, Charley. Ultimately everything I do and have done in the last 13 years of being with them has been inspired by the love I have for them and the life we have together.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Oh, definitely not! Ha! I don’t know that it’s a “smooth” road for anyone, is it? I know the biggest struggle for me – both in my career and my life – is to accept my own power. It may sound cliche, but the fact is I was so eager to give my power away – whether by waiting for permission to act by waiting for auditions or agents or other people to give me a job, or by surrounding myself with people who weren’t so good for me but whose approval I somehow desperately wanted – that I couldn’t even enjoy my obvious successes. I remember being in my second Broadway show and thinking “Oh they only let me play this role because I fit the costume”. Not accepting the power of taking the wins and taking responsibility for my own happiness and success kept me not just from truly enjoying my successes, but also from making strong choices that could support and create the life that I wanted.

When I realized that it was so much less about waiting for approval or permission and instead about choosing to be of service with everything I did the world opened up a lot more, and I started to find a kind of happiness I hadn’t had before. When I finally realized that what I really wanted to do with my career and my life was let people know they’re not alone and give them the chance to experience things they maybe couldn’t on their own, everything just became so much more fun. And now that I’ve found that, I find the greatest challenge I face is wanting to do way too much because I’m enjoying everything I’m taking on. I have to remind myself, yes, you can do it all….you just can’t do it all at the same time.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
There are so many hyphenates that fit me and my work, but ultimately I think I’m a professional storyteller. I act in theatre, television, film, video games, animation, live play gaming shows, and more; I produce projects for multiple media, I write books, I publish, I do keynote speaking..but all of it, at the end of the day, is about getting to connect through story.

I can’t pick one project that I’m most proud of, there are too many great ones, but I can say that one of my favorites this year has been a video game called Stray Gods which is a role-playing musical video game. Never in my life did I think I would get to combine my love of mythology, musical theatre, and games in one project, and yet here we are. I’m actually writing this from Australia right now, where we are about to perform songs from the game for the opening night event of SXSW Games in Sydney.

I think what I’m most proud of in my life is that people seem to be touched by what I do enough that they stick around and follow my work across multiple media and projects… I have often said I don’t care how you find me; I care THAT you find me in any medium, and it makes me so happy when people say they found me through something and then stayed because they enjoyed the energy I bring to what I do. It makes all of the tough times so worth it when I hear that something I’ve done has changed someone’s life in some way for the better. It’s a wonderful guiding light to follow – just reminding people that they aren’t alone in this world.

What was your favorite childhood memory?
We were on a family trip in India and my brother and I definitely had some energy to burn…I remember jumping on the beds in our hotel room while singing a silly song that we had made up half in English and half in Gujarati (the language my parents spoke at home in addition to English). My brother was and is just about the coolest brother I could ever have asked for. He’s the one who introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons when I was eight, who inspired me to do so many things, and who ultimately was the first person to really tell me to focus on the things I loved, that I cared about, instead of worrying about what other people thought I should do, or what I thought I had to be. If it wasn’t for a conversation he had with me in junior high, I’m not sure I would have let myself fully give over to my love of acting…I probably would have spent a lot more time trying to fit into a mold that other people may have wanted me to fit. Instead, my brother – the same guy who jumped on beds with me and sang silly songs with me – showed me how important it was to do my own thing and to decide for myself what that was.

Yeah, he’s kind of the best.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.anjalibhimani.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/sweeetanj
• Facebook: Facebook.com/anjalibhimani
• Twitter: twitter.com/sweeetanj
• Youtube: Youtube.com/sweeetanj

Image Credits
Matthew Kenneth, Isaac Alvarez, Liz Lauren