Prasanna Puwanarajah

Prasanna Puwanarajah

Prasanna Puwanarajah

Kelly Macdonald and Prasanna Puwanarajah in Ten Percent.

Courtesy of Sundance Now
Fill 1
Fill 1
July 25, 2022
In The Mix

Prasanna Puwanarajah's New Specialty

A former physician now treats talent woes as an agent in Sundance Now's Ten Percent.

Dinah Eng

While working as a doctor for Great Britain’s National Health Service, Prasanna Puwanarajah dabbled as an actor, writer and director in local theater. A sabbatical from the service led to an audition for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which in turn led to work with The National Theatre.

He decided to become an actor and never looked back.

Now, Puwanarajah stars as Dan Bala, a talent agent on Sundance Now’s Ten Percent, the British version of the French hit comedy Call My Agent! The series follows the harried agents of a London boutique agency as they manage the careers of their celebrity clients while dealing with their many struggles and foibles.

London-based Puwanarajah was working on a film in Northern Ireland under lockdown conditions when his agent urged him to audition for Ten Percent. So he spent Christmas Eve 2020 making a video for the show. After two callbacks, he was offered the part.

“I loved the original,” he says. “It’s a real honor to take it and run with it in Ten Percent. The tone of the show is [writer–executive producer] John Morton’s angle on workplace comedy. There’s a beautiful, occasional melancholy to it, as well as speed and humor, which is very British.”

He describes the entertainment business in the U.K. as a cottage industry, in contrast to the enormous TV and movie industry in Hollywood. In Ten Percent, that distinction is the stuff of laughs.

However, comedy isn’t the only genre in Puwanarajah’s repertoire. His drama credits include Showtime’s Patrick Melrose, and in the upcoming season of Netflix’s The Crown, he will play disgraced journalist Martin Bashir. He also recently directed his first feature comedy, Ballywalter, which was selected as part of 2021’s Cannes Great 8, which showcases emerging British filmmakers.

Puwanarajah’s parents immigrated from Sri Lanka; his mother was a psychiatrist and his father a dentist. The prejudice the family faced has made him an outspoken advocate for diversity.

He says productions often deal with diversity in a panic, as an afterthought. “Shit, we’ve got to get some brown people in this,” he says mockingly. “It’s not baked into the ethos, so there’s a last-minute attempt to get diversity in. Ten Percent does a tip of the hat to that.”


"This article originally appeared in emmy magazine issue #7, 2022, under the title, "Change Agent."

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