Oscars 2019: Best actress Olivia Colman has an Indian connection - and it's in Bihar

NEW DELHI: British actress Olivia Colman made headlines on Monday after winning the Oscar for her portrayal in Yorgis Lanthimos’s 'The Favourite' in which she plays Queen Anne. Her acceptance speech, which she herself called "hilarious", has been termed "sweet, sincere, gracious, excruciatingly funny" after it trended on Twitter, and giving rise to funny memes.

For the audience in India, the association with Colman has been through the British detective tele-series 'Broadchurch', and 'The Night Manager', that is based on spy writer John le Carre's book.

But, Colman, it turns out, has another Indian connection as well: in the form of an ancestor who was born in the subcontinent, and could have been of Indian descent.

The 45-year-old Colman discovered this facet of her lineage in a July 2018 episode of the British documentary series 'Who Do You Think You Are', in which celebrities trace their genealogy with the help of experts. The actress begins the episode by establishing that she’s “the least adventurous person” she knows and as far as she is aware “the Colmans have never lived anywhere but Norfolk”.

After a visit to her parents' home in the English county, the actress discovers a more global geographical footprint. The first Indian link is revealed through her great-great-great-great grandfather from her maternal side, Richard Campbell Bazett, who was employed with the East India Company in London and Kolkata. A peek into his life reveals adultery and children born out of wedlock, among other things. There also emerges another Indian link through her great-great-great grandfather Charles, whose wife, Harriot, was born in Kishanganj in Bihar in the early 1800s, when the East India Company held sway.

While visiting Kishanganj, she learns that Harriot’s father was probably living with an Indian woman while in Kishanganj,.and Hariott was their child. Colman puts history and facts in perspective through records, diary entries, newspaper clippings and letters.

From Kishanganj, Colman is then shown heading to Kolkata and travels along the Hooghly river. Her ancestral grandmother comes back to the subcontinent in 1832, sometime in her twenties, and gets married here. Her first marriage cut short by her husband’s untimely death, Harriot finds love once again and marries Colman’s great-great-great grandfather Charles, with whom she spends many years in India.

“I’m so much more interesting than I thought I was... I hadn’t got a clue that India played any part of my family,” she says in the episode.