Anita Rani: 'I'm not sure that entirely urban living is in tune with our nature'

Surrounded by concrete, streams of people and the hum of traffic in the East London neighbourhood where she lives, Anita Rani’s eyes sparkle as she describes her previous day’s filming on BBC’s Countryfile. “We were on a farm in Devon, my hand was in this ewe, my adrenaline was sky high. The farmer said, ‘Feel the lamb’s head and pull its legs.’ I pulled and all of a sudden, from nothing… life! It was wild.”

Anita is a veteran at combining rural and urban existence. In London, her schedule includes BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and TV’s The One Show, while her country life is underpinned by her decade-long Countryfile role. The countryside is a personal escape, too, from the Yorkshire Moors where she was brought up to Suffolk’s Wilderness Reserve, where she has just spent an electricity-free, off-grid weekend away. By her own admission, Anita needs each one just as much as the other.

“I’m not sure that entirely urban living is in tune with our nature,” she says. “When I got divorced (she separated from her husband of 14 years in 2023), I thought, I can buy myself whatever I want. I don’t have to consider anyone else’s feelings. So I bought a red convertible VW Beetle to get me out of London. It makes me smile every time I get in it. I put on the radio, hit the M11 and get the heck out.”

The BBC and beyond

Fuelled by that desire for liberation, 2026 has become Anita’s year of media empire-building. As we talk, there are workmen in her house constructing a podcast studio for her upcoming series Sisters of Defiance, in which she’ll interview “the ultimate disruptive, rebellious women” (if you’re reading this, Madonna and Tracey Emin, you’re her dream guests). She also has a new YouTube channel, Anita Rani Explores, featuring travel, food and wellness.

“I felt like there was nowhere in my life where I could express myself truly,” she says of this pivot into more personal projects. “I love working at the BBC, I love my career, but I enter spaces and, to some degree, I have to conform to fit in. I’ve had to do that my whole life and I wanted to create a space where I can unapologetically be myself, to represent the women I want to represent.”

She had offers from various podcast companies, but Hamnet director Chloé Zhao, who Anita interviewed for Woman’s Hour, inspired her to go it alone. “I was asking how she’d done it, as a complete outsider in Hollywood and a Chinese immigrant to America,” says Anita. “She makes Nomadland, a film nothing like any of the other Hollywood blockbusters, and wins best director at the Oscars, without losing any of her integrity. She said, ‘If you’re in the house that someone else built, and they’re not letting you get to the top floor, then you come out of the front door and you build a house yourself.’ So rather than going with any offers, I decided to do my own thing.

“Aren’t all women who’ve achieved something a bit rebellious? All women, to some degree, have to upset the apple cart. The more women I speak to who have done something extraordinary have probably had that little chip in them since they were young.”

A special co-star

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Anita Rani Explores has one significant co-star: Anita’s beloved dad, Bal. The pair took part in last year’s Celebrity Race Across the World, and Bal’s popularity (he now has Facebook fan pages) scored him his own slot on her channel.

“They call him Bal Clooney at work,” Anita laughs. “Doing Race Across the World was a magical experience, in a way I didn’t expect. We had such beautiful, intimate conversations that weren’t aired, which we can now continue on YouTube. Hearing about his childhood, understanding what it takes to be so enlightened and curious – I just think people need more Bal!”

It was from Bal and her mother, Lakhbir, that Anita inherited her love of the great outdoors. Living in the suburbs of Bradford, the family would pile into Bal’s Rover hatchback and escape to the Yorkshire Moors to decompress, Anita with her face pressed against the window, drinking in the landscapes.

“Nature’s palette is just sublime,” she says. “The purple heather against the pink skies… it’s spiritual. You don’t need to be religious to feel something greater than yourself when you step out into the countryside. Seeing a horizon, not seeing any concrete, it taps into something innate in all of us.”

Anita’s earliest memories are of family picnics on those trips: parathas, samosas and a flask of chai. “I’d be mortified because all I wanted was cheese sandwiches,” she says. “I was hyper aware of being the only Asian family out on the Moors and how other people might be looking at us.” It was her dad who told her to ignore it, and who instilled in her the understanding that she had as much right to be in the countryside as anyone else: that the great outdoors is for everyone.

Those childhood picnics sparked a lifelong love of British travel, and Anita returns from Countryfile filming trips with notes about where she wants to revisit. She’ll take on almost any part of the British landscape, the wilder the better. Dartmoor’s an obvious one; Braemar in Scotland is another, where she just visited, taking the sleeper train to Inverness before travelling onward. Then there’s the Northumberland coast, where beaches go on for ever, and Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons), where last year she combined two of her favourite things – a walk over The Sugar Loaf and watching bands at the Green Man festival. So where’s next on her list?

“People talk about India being their spiritual home, but for me it’s Ireland,” she says. “There are many similarities between Punjabis and the Irish. There’s something about that kind of yearning, melancholy, naughty sense of humour, pride in their culture and their arts, so I want to do a road trip across Ireland.”

She’s also looking forward to summer in London. “I love everything about this time of year,” she says. “Like the long summer days, when you think you’re going to have a quiet one, and then someone calls you to meet in the park for a picnic, and before you know it the wheels have fallen off.”

From her childhood chai picnics to the more rowdy-sounding ones today, it’s clear that Anita is at home in both her rural and urban worlds. Her father Bal’s early example that the countryside is for everyone has shaped his daughter’s life and work in ways he could never have foreseen. No wonder she’s taking him with her on her YouTube adventures. We can’t wait to see what they get up to next.

Discover Anita on YouTube @AnitaRaniExplores. Follow her on Instagram @itsanitarani.