Sonam Shekhawat

Sonam Shekhawat is a renowned animation screenwriter who became the first Indian to win an Emmy Award for her show “All hail King Julien."The show is streaming on Netflix. Sonam is known for her work, such as Mighty Raju, Bandhbudh or Budbak, Shaktiman Animated, Chota Bheem, Golmal Junior, etc. Sonam belongs to Rajasthan's Rajput family. She was born in Karauli, and raised in Jaipur, Rajasthan. She loves watching animated movies and shows since her childhood. When she was 5, she went to watch the movie Jurassic Park with her father, and from that day she decided that she want to do something like that as she was fascinated by the characters, and wanted to create her own. At a young age Sonam started writing poems and stories, some of her work were published in the local newspaper.

Sonam was always a good student, when she completed her schooling, her parents suggested her to pursue medicine or engineering but, Sonam chose animation instead. She went to Birla Institute of Technology and pursued her degree in Animation and Multimedia. She did an internship with Reliance Animations as a 3D artist, and while interning, she got an opportunity to write for the Shaktiman Animated series. Sonam wrote the series’s title theme and some other soundtracks. In 2014 when she started to work with Dreamworks Animation, she wrote “All Hail King Julien,” All three seasons were nominated for the Emmy Award, and she won the award for the third season and became first Indian to win an Emmy.

When Sonam is asked of inspiration she tells ,she gets it from her kid, Atharv, who loves watching cartoons and tells his friends that his mother makes cartoons and he would do the same when he grows up. She says children are the major source of inspiration for her. When she faces creative blocks, she engages herself in painting or writing songs, which helps her write. Her favorite animated movie is “The Emperor’s New Groove. She also loved reading Harry Potter as a child. Reading books and watching shows broadens our imagination, she says.

lncluding the Emmy Award, she has won many other awards, but Emmy was a different experience, she mentioned in an interview. Winning this gave her international recognition and broadened her horizon to choose. Sonam joined Green Gold Animations in 2012, which was working with Disney, where she wrote Might Raju, 50 to 60 episodes for Chota Bheem, some movies, and 20-30 songs for the franchise. She has also written popular shows such as Golmal Junior, Bandbudh or Budbak, Arjun the Prince of Bali, Little Singham Little Singham is an Indian animated cartoon show >> Read More... , Luv And Kush, etc. So far, Sonam has written some of the most popular and loved animation series in India, UK, and the US. The brilliant and talented storyteller, Sonam is a member of MENSA, and currently she heads the Nucleus Media, London’s Children and Family division.