Aizzah Fatima is a writer, playwright, and actress based in New York City, who works in TV, film, commercials, and theater. She is a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Fatima wrote and produced a one-woman play, Dirty Paki Lingerie, touching on themes of Muslim identity, sexuality, bullying, and racial profiling, performed at over 30 college campuses nationwide and reaching over 6,000 people. She also had a role on The Good Wife and other HBO shows. “I remember when I first auditioned for this HBO show, High Maintenance. They had some scenes that just didn't portray Muslims in a good light. The writers, after I got cast, came to me, ‘You know we’d like to hear about your life, and where you come from, and what that’s like for you, so we can tell a better nuanced story.’ I feel like that was a true collaboration, and it was the first time on HBO that I heard people speaking in another language, and it was not ‘terrorist-y.’ We spoke Urdu; a lot of our scenes were in heavy Urdu mixed with English, which is how people would usually talk. And, so, we got to say things like ‘Assalaam alaikum’ and ‘Khuda Hafiz,’ and it was a regular family living in New York.” In addition to acting, Fatima was also commissioned to collaborate on four original children's musicals and write the book for one of them through a grant from the Doris Duke Foundation for the Brooklyn Children’s Theater. The musicals feature Muslim protagonists. One of the commissioned works, The Ten-Year Test, traces how Eid became a public holiday in New York City public schools after a decade of campaigning by the Muslim community.
