Netflix’s ‘queen of screens’ hid a secret about her past. When it came to light, she froze

Her work ethic is also informed by the sacrifices her parents made, including establishing a car wash business in LA while she lived with her grandparents in London, in a flat above their corner grocery shop. “As a kid, it was amazing,” she recalls. “You’d run downstairs any time you wanted candy or an ice cream.”

In the mid-1990s, Bajaria joined CBS as an assistant. She took it upon herself to read every script she could get her hands on, even providing feedback in the form of “notes”: a task way above her pay grade. She also spent hours in the broadcaster’s basement video library, watching old telemovies and miniseries.

“[As an assistant], you can either just pass through or you can be a sponge and absorb everything,” she says.

When CBS executive Michael Healy (not to be confused with the Nine TV director of the same name) accepted a job at Disney, he recommended Bajaria as his replacement. “You mean the assistant?” his stunned colleagues asked. Bajaria was equally surprised.

“I had no idea he even knew I existed,” she says. “But he [said to the other executives], ‘She read every one of my scripts and gave notes on every project; she could start tomorrow because she knows the material.’ I wasn’t doing it to be acknowledged – I just wanted to learn – but the lesson is that you never know who’s watching you.”

At the start of this year, Amanda Duthie (who has held senior positions at SBS, the ABC and Stan) took the reins as Netflix’s head of content in Australia and New Zealand. In her first few weeks, she had hundreds of meetings with producers. “We wanted to open the doors and windows and say, ‘Come and talk to us about your projects’,” Duthie said.

If Bajaria were to offer one piece of advice to those pitching to Netflix, it’s this: do not market your series as “an international show”.

“What does that even mean?” she says. “Whether it’s Amanda in Australia [or her equivalents] in India or Mexico, we want each show to be really culturally specific, because that will resonate more than trying to do it through a US or global lens.

“Take Boy Swallows Universe or My Brilliant Career, which is No. 2 in so many countries, or shows that we’ve licensed like Fisk, which is so clever and well done. Look at Squid Game: it was made in Korea, by Koreans, for Koreans. If you try to make something for everyone, you make it for no one.”