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If there is one thing that is certain in this world, it is that I am a disgrace to Varsova.
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I have lived in this most filmy suburb of Mumbai for the last 15 years and have been
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here throughout the 189 weeks that the seen and the unseen has been running.
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I have recorded episodes on economics, public policy, political philosophy, history, sociology
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even sports, but not a single episode on cinema, not a single episode on entertainment, not
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a single episode on acting or direction or cinematography or even music.
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And I say in Varsova, this is an unpardonable, unspeakable, eldritch, monstrous omission
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and it will be too late for redemption if I don't do something right now.
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Welcome to the seen and the unseen.
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Our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral science.
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Please welcome your host, Amit Barma.
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Welcome to the seen and the unseen.
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In one sense, you could say that we are all actors.
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We are often performing for others and always performing for ourselves.
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Today's episode is about acting, but not acting in this deep metaphysical sense, which may
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or may not be me acting profound to myself.
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Instead, my guests today are two wonderful actors who have made a name for themselves
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doing independent cinema and cutting edge web series.
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These are exciting times in Indian entertainment and these two are both living their dream
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Being an actor in Mumbai can be turbulent with so many different worlds and sensibilities
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colliding with each other.
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Prasika Duggal studied mathematics in college, became a researcher and wonk for a while,
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but then fell in love with acting and decided that was all she wanted to do.
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She's acted in films like Kissam, Manto and Lootcase, as also in web series like Delhi
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Crime, Made in Heaven, Mirzapu and A Suitable Boy.
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Her husband Mukul Chadda also studied math in college, though not with Prasika, and did
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an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad.
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He then became a banker in New York and single-handedly caused the 2008 financial crisis.
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He then gave it up to become an actor.
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His most recent part was a lead role in the Indian version of The Office.
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He has also acted a fair bit in independent cinema and does improv theatre in Mumbai as
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Mukul and I were both serious poker players once upon a time, which is how we became friends.
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I'd been thinking for a while of inviting Mukul and Prasika onto the show to talk about
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their journeys, the state of Indian cinema and the craft of acting.
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I loved the conversation we ended up having, but before we get to it, let's take a quick
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If you enjoy listening to The Scene and the Unseen, you can play a part in keeping the
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The Scene and the Unseen has been a labor of love for me.
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I've enjoyed putting together many stimulating conversations, expanding my brain and my universe,
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and hopefully yours as well.
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But while the work has been its own reward, I don't actually make much money off the show.
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Although The Scene and the Unseen has great numbers, advertisers haven't really woken
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up to the insane engagement level of podcasts, and I do many many hours of deep research
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for each episode, besides all the logistics of producing the show myself – scheduling
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guests, booking studios, paying technicians, the travel and so on.
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So well, I'm trying a new way of keeping this thing going, and that involves you.
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My proposition for you is this – for every episode of The Scene and the Unseen that you
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enjoy, buy me a cup of coffee, or even a lavish lunch, whatever you feel is worth.
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You can do this by heading over to sceneunseen.in slash support, and contributing an amount
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This is not a subscription.
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The Scene and the Unseen will continue to be free on all podcast apps and at sceneunseen.in.
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This is just a gesture of appreciation.
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Help keep this thing going.
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Sceneunseen.in slash support.
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Rasika and Mukul, welcome to The Scene and the Unseen.
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So thank you for having us, Amit.
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You know, before we start talking about your acting careers, which sort of and about the
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craft itself and Indian cinema and all of that, I am very curious to sort of know about
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your personal backgrounds, and I'll start with Mukul first, because Mukul, I don't
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know if you remember, but – and this almost sounds – now that I realize it, it almost
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sounds creepy, but I kind of remember the exact time when we met, which was in March
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or April 2007, where a mutual friend of ours, Manish Widge, the great Sepia Mutiny blogger,
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he lived in Bombay for a few years, and he was moving back to the States, and he had
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a farewell party in some Bandra nightclub, then you dropped in for a while, and I was
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introduced to you and told that this is Mukul Chaddha, the actor.
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What I kind of noticed about your career is, you know, people often accuse me of having
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had an interesting life in just in terms of CV, because, you know, in the 90s, there is
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all the MTV and Channel V, and then there is – in the 40s, there is a sort of journalism
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and the blogging and everything, and then there's five years as a professional poker
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player, and now podcasting and all of that.
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And your career is also seems, you know, even more interesting than mine, because you actually
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share the poker player part of it, and plus, you know, you were an MBA in IIM, Ahmedabad,
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you were a banker in New York, where you also studied at the Lee Strasburg School, and now
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you've come back here, and you're not just acting, you're also, you know, you wrote
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a lovely short film recently, Banana Bread.
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So tell me a little bit about your journey and, you know, how you took all these twists
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Well, on paper, that sounds wonderful in the way you – if you introduce it like that,
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then suddenly I start feeling good about myself.
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But yeah, I remember your – I'd first heard of you when you were a cricket writer, so
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I'd heard of the Amit Verma, and I think that's what I said to you when we first met.
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He said, oh, you're that Amit Verma, because, you know, I read a lot of your stuff, I'm
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a huge cricket fan, so I read your stuff, and then, of course, we met very often on
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As far as my journey was concerned, I started off my life doing something completely different,
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I did a classical MBA and, you know, got into finance, and I was lucky enough to get
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a job on Wall Street and Lehman Brothers.
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So I was – for the most part, I was a research analyst.
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I was analyzing the debt of these big behemoths, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, primarily.
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I was the lead analyst on their debt, and other US agencies – this is pointless for
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some of your listeners, but I was analyzing their debt for the most part of what I did.
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I was there on Lehman Brothers for six years in New York.
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And yeah, acting was always something that I was interested in, but I think growing up
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at the time I did grow up, it wasn't an easy decision.
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It wasn't something you did if you – especially if you're good in studies, you know, unfortunately
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You know, it was people became actors if they weren't good in studies, or at least that
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was what we were told by parents and everybody else.
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So I was always interested.
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I always was on stage in school, in college, etc., and even while in New York, we started
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a theater group called Alter Ego, which was for people who were working professionals.
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We'd rehearse only on weekends and weeknights, and then I did classes at Lee Strasburg, but
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to me it was always a sort of very serious hobby.
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You know, I never thought of it as something more than that.
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But obviously somewhere down the line, working at Lehman Brothers, Wall Street wasn't for
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One part was I really wanted to come back to India.
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And the other was I just – you know, while the finance part interested me academically
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while studying it and even initially in the first few years, I think the good part about
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Wall Street is that there are no illusions from day one.
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You know, you pretty much enter and they tell you how much of a dog-eat-dog world it is,
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and everybody is just out to make money, and you know, whether you're screwing the customer,
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it doesn't really matter.
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I mean, you know, there's absolutely no – you know, nobody gets disillusioned along the
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You pretty much – you realize very much in advance that either this is for me or not
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But it's also very hard to quit a job like that.
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So it took me a while before I could muster up the courage to quit.
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Also, I didn't know what else I would do.
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So I wanted to move back to India, but I didn't know what I would do.
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In fact, when I would come back to India on holidays, I would meet friends of mine, you
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know, ex-classmates, and ask them in finance, you know, and say, you know, what are you
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And you know, what could I move back and do?
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And all of them said that we want to move to where you are working.
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You know, they want to quit their jobs and move to New York.
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So I found that it would be very hard to perhaps move to a place where everyone's aspiring
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to go to where I've come from.
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And I didn't know what I'd want to do.
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So eventually, I think after, you know, a long time of thinking about it and dragging
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my feet on it for a while, it took me six years.
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And then I finally quit and I moved back to India without anything, which I know shocked
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everybody in the family because they couldn't understand how I could do something like that.
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And you know, here I was the poster child for all, you know, relatives, I mean, NRI
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banker in New York, and then I was unemployed in Bombay.
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And I think I wouldn't say that I chose to become an actor then.
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That would have been too much of a leap for me.
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I told myself I'm taking a sabbatical a couple of years because I didn't know what I wanted
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So the two things I was interested in were writing and acting and I wanted to explore
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So I thought I'd do that for a couple of years, a year or two years and and then see where
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you know, life takes me.
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I mean, I somewhere I think I always imagined I might have, you know, started or some something
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on my own or got another job later, but you know, because I was doing theater for a while
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or writing, I might, you know, get a leg into that world and maybe hopefully do, you know,
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like we did in New York, you know, do evening rehearsals and act and plays once in a while.
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But once I started doing it and the writing didn't go very far, I have a lot of half finished
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or some finished and a lot of half finished stories on my laptop.
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So which I hope to get back to someday.
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So yes, in that sense, you know, banana bread was wonderful for me to, you know, I wrote
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It really felt wonderful to be able to fulfill some part of that.
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But the writing didn't really go very far.
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The acting did in the sense I started doing theater in Bombay and it's easier because,
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you know, writing is a very solitary, as you know, it's a very solitary occupation.
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It's not just the skill, it's also the temperament to keep doing things and and manage to finish
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Whereas with theater, once you join a play, which is what I did, you know, the rehearsal
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schedule is set, you know, there's a show date, you have to do it.
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And so I started doing that and I enjoyed it enough that I didn't quit, you know, it
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was so called sabbatical for maybe a year initially, then it became two years.
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And then I was just stretching it on because I didn't I didn't have the guts, I think,
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to admit to myself that I wanted to do this full time.
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So it just kept but I wasn't quitting either, you know, I was continuing to do this and
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I did this for a while.
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I think I just continued.
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I think if I have any regrets, it's those that, you know, a couple of years after that
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also when I was kind of telling myself I'm kind of doing this semi seriously, but not,
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you know, as a full time career.
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I didn't admit that to myself until I was doing it long enough that one fine day I realized,
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you know, I have become a full time actor.
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I mean, I'm doing this.
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So it did take me a little while.
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But yeah, that's that's kind of the journey with, you know, as to how I became an actor.
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And the little part of your eclectic background that I forgot to mention is that you were
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a Chadha brought up in Chennai and you can make great dosas, which is also fascinating.
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And you were talking about sort of, you know, writing being the solitary act and the rest
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of it working out because, you know, you're working with other people and there are constantly
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And it seemed to me that, you know, that trade off is interesting because when I was a kid,
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I was torn between do I want to be a writer or do I one day want to direct films because
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I was into a lot of world cinema and all of that.
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And then I thought, no, if I'm writing something, I am completely in control of what I'm writing.
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If I'm into, you know, the industry, I have to then coordinate with a bunch of people,
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sell my ideas to others.
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There are so many things out of my control.
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So which is why I kind of came to writing, but it's interesting that, you know, your
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journey seems so almost so serendipitous, like, you know, John Lennon says, life is
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what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.
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And it's that kind of a feeling.
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It's kind of, you know, from the interviews that I watched of yours on YouTube and so
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on, it feels a bit like that as well in the sense that, you know, you were almost on the
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way to becoming like a policy wonk, the kind of person who would be on my show anyway.
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But then you move from kind of research to acting.
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Tell me a bit about that journey.
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Like was acting something you were always interested in and considered or did it just,
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you know, grow from an interest to something more than that?
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Not so consciously, actually, even if it was, I wasn't really thinking of it that consciously.
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And I didn't really think that it could be a career primarily because there was no precedence
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of that in the environment that I grew up in.
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So I grew up in Jamshedpur and my father runs a business and my mother runs a boutique.
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And I didn't really think that acting could be a career.
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That was not a part of my worldview, but I was always one of those people in school who
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would jump on stage at the drop of a hat, you know, and was very happy to be on stage.
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Then I went to Delhi University and I studied at LSR and I was studying maths honours, much
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Mukul was also studying maths honours many years before me.
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So I think LSR is the first place where I would say I started acting seriously because
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I was introduced suddenly to a new world where I realized that there's a lot to learn and
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there's so much talent.
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And most of the people I interacted with at LSR were very, they'd all done theatre for
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a while and trained under professionals.
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And they just knew so much more than my little Jamshedpur life had exposed me to.
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So I was quite taken in by all of that.
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And so maths was one of the toughest subjects in Delhi University, but and I was so honestly
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And I still think that was one of the worst decisions in my life.
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I would have loved to study history or political science or even economics at D.U., but I was
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quite bored with maths honours.
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And so I started doing a lot of theatre on the side and I started watching a lot of theatre
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So I wouldn't go back home for holidays, would take buses to the Habitat Centre and the Sriram
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Centre and watch a lot of plays and also try and do as much theatre as I could, as much
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as a rigorous course as maths honours allowed me to.
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So I think my first real acting experience was with a lovely theatre person called Anamika
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Huxel, who's recently made a film as well.
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And the first play I did was a play called Riders to the Sea.
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And we did the translated version in Hindi.
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And so that was my first acting experience and I was quite taken in by all of that and
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very interested in what I was doing at LSR as part of the Dramatic Society.
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But again, there was so much talent around me that I didn't have the confidence to apply
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to NSD, which was the only other thing that I knew of around in which you train as an
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So I didn't really take that seriously.
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I didn't know what to do after college, but whatever came my way, I was very happy to
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sort of take that up enthusiastically.
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So when I was in my third year, the girl who was in the room in front of my room in the
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hostel was filling a form for a mass communication course, one at Jamia, one at Xavier's and
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So I was sitting in her room and flipping through the brochure and I saw this brochure
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of the course of social communications media at Sophia's.
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So I went through the list of subjects and one of them said, film study, and I said,
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you know what, interesting here.
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And I had been part of some film clubs at LSR and I'd watched a few films, but I never
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really got an opportunity to explore that further.
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In fact, my first recollection of being very mesmerized by a clip of a film that I saw
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was at, funnily enough, at a conference on conflict and peace, which was initiated by
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an organization that the then principal of LSR, Dr. Meenakshi Gopinath used to run.
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And somebody showed a clip of Pather Panjali.
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And I was very taken in by that clip and it stayed with me for a while.
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But I didn't really get an opportunity to sort of watch a lot of films while I was at
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hostel and things were not available on Deel Deel and online as they are today.
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So when I saw film studies in that brochure, I said, let me apply for it.
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And I also applied for it because it was one of the only courses which had an entrance
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exam after my exams at Maths Honors would have finished.
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So it was kind of by chance.
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So I applied to social communications media and the girl whose brochure I was going through,
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I don't think she got through, but I did.
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And I didn't think that I really wanted to study that course.
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I didn't know what I wanted to do.
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And my parents said, oh, I think you should go abroad to study something.
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You know, it was that kind of a thing.
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And they said, come on, the 16th year of education will be done, do this course.
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So I went to Sophia's and I think that one year at Sophia's was one of the best years
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I have never met a bunch of women or a bunch of people who I've studied with who are so
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We were all from similar backgrounds, similar colleges, and we were probably all the kind
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of people in college who were very enthusiastic about anything, you know, so it was very interesting
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to be a part of that course.
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And journalism was also one of the papers and Jerry Pinto was a teacher, P. Sainath
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was a teacher, Paro Mitha took a few classes on filmmaking, so very interesting bunch of
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And I think I was very moved by every class that I attended at Sophia's.
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After Sophia's, after I finished that one year course, again, I didn't know what to
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do because the course is very interesting, it teaches you a lot and most importantly
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it gives you a very interesting worldview, but you're not really specialized in anything
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So I didn't know what to do, so I wrote emails to a couple of people and said, you know,
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I think I want to be a research assistant.
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I just want to help somebody gather some information, that's how vague my intent was.
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And I got an email from somebody which said that Abhijit Banerjee and Rohini Pandey are
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starting a research project which is based in Lucknow and they're looking for somebody
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to get secondary research data material for them.
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I didn't know what that even meant, honestly.
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I had no academic background in the social sciences, I had not studied even statistics,
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you know, I was a math student.
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So I said, this sounds like fun, I'll move to Lucknow, so I packed my bags and a week
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later I was in Lucknow and trying to make inroads into PWD offices, the Vidhan Sabha
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to get information for Abhijit and Rohini's project.
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I didn't understand how that information was really going to be used or anything like that.
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But I was pretty good at it because enthusiasm of course and also I think people are less
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suspicious of a young woman trying.
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So I would say sir, hume college ka project hai, toh please aap maje library me aana diji.
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So I would get access to a lot of things which otherwise might be, you know, wrapped in a
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So I collected that material for them and they were quite happy with what I had done,
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so I was even more encouraged to stick around.
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So I worked on the project for about five months and then I think just living in Lucknow
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alone and not having a bunch of friends and not being able to access public space like
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I had become used to accessing in Bombay, I decided that I wanted to move back.
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So I started looking for similar jobs in Bombay and somebody wrote me an email saying that
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Hukar, which was an organization started by Arjuna Padurai, Partners for Urban Knowledge
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Action and Research, they were doing a project on gender in public space, which was being
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done by Shilpa Phatke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Rana.
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So I wrote them an email and I got that job as a research assistant and I came back to
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Bombay to work on that.
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That was slightly more interesting, but because it was not qualitative, it was an ethnographic
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So it required me to actually study behavior of women in public spaces.
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So I would go to stations regularly and watch food stalls and who stood at a food stall
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to eat their food, who just carried their food and left and mostly most women, it was
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really startling to see that women would not stand and eat at a public stall.
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So I worked on that project for a long time and my friends would make fun of me that,
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so how many toilets are there for women in Andheri station?
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And there was a time when I knew exactly what the figures were, I would say, Andheri East
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Station meh itna hai, Andheri West meh itna hai, because I had done all of that.
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So and how the toilets function and all of that.
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So it was very interesting to do that.
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But I soon realized that while all of this is interesting, unless I went and got a formal
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education in the social sciences, I would not really be able to understand this more
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than more than what I understand of it today.
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And I really didn't feel like I had the energy for that.
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And I had heard a lot of academic conversations around me.
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And while they were very interesting, I also felt like it was not my cup of tea.
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I wanted something which was more tangible, maybe.
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So that's when I was flipping through the newspaper one day, and I found that FTII was
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restarting their acting course.
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This was in 2004, it had shut down in 76.
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I had studied film at Sophia's, so I was very mesmerized by the idea of a film school, and
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especially one like FTII, which had a history of descent.
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So I said, this should be an interesting space.
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And I had a few friends from there, and they were totally in love with the idea of being
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So I had heard about this wisdom tree, where people sit together and talk about cinema,
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and every evening you get to watch a film.
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And that the physical space, the place that FTII is located in, was once Prabhat Studios.
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And I was like, wow, I'm going to be a part of history.
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So that's when I applied for FTII.
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I didn't think I would make it, because there was a very rigorous three-round entrance exam.
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And the last round was a four-day workshop in the institute.
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And when I met the people who were there at the workshop, they'd all come with a lot of
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experience and a lot of varied experiences.
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Somebody had worked with Naya Theatre for years, somebody was in the Sriram Repertory.
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And I had had no acting experience since LSR, so I hadn't done a performance for the last
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three years before I went to that four-day workshop.
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And I was very shy, and it was very difficult for me to really do anything at that workshop.
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And I didn't think I would make it, but I did.
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There were 20 people who were selected, and for some reason, I was a part of that list.
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Once I joined the institute, I think that's when it possibly became different for Mukul
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About six months into the institute, I knew that this is what I wanted to do for a really,
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And I wasn't willing to accept, even for a single day, that it wouldn't work out.
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So I came to Bombay with that momentum, and really with a desire to get as much work as
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No, I just want to say, I think Rasika just said that it was different for her and me
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in that sense that she was very clear she wanted to be an actor.
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And I have to say that I think when I met Rasika, I think her focus at wanting to be
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an actor had a big influence on me, because I was, until then, sort of dabbing in multiple
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things, like we talked about, and you said you did something similar.
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I think it also comes from having varied interests.
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I played poker for a while.
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Not that I ever thought that that's a career, but I took it very seriously for some time.
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I even started with an ex-colleague from Lehman while I was in Bombay.
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We started a firm that was looking for investing opportunities in the equity markets in India,
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and we started a firm, and we were doing that work.
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So I kind of dabbled in multiple things, and I sort of liked that as well.
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And I have to say that seeing Rasika's single-minded focus was also an influence because I also
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realized that if you want to get ahead in any one career, you kind of have to push yourself
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And I think somewhere the lack of that drive of focus was affecting me and probably also
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helped me say, okay, I really need to narrow down a few things here and focus in one direction.
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And when, Rasika, you were talking about your time at LSR where you felt that all these
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people around me are so accomplished, they've been doing theater for so long and blah, blah,
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And the thought that kind of struck me in my follow-up question is from there.
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And one thought that struck me was that then it's sort of interesting that through that
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journey that you are sort of where you are today, where you are a fairly accomplished
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actress and so on and no doubt, many of those other people haven't quite managed to make
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And my question from there is, and no doubt a lot of this is, of course, things that happened
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to you and serendipity and luck and so on, there's no denying that.
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But equally, just thinking aloud, do you think the fact that you had these sort of unusual
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backgrounds where you've done other things, where you've looked at life from a variety
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of different angles, do you think that sort of made a difference in how you looked at
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Because I would imagine that a lot of people who come into acting and want to be actors
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want to do nothing but that.
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That's the whole kind of worldview when you sort of from the time you're a kid, you know,
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that's what you want to do and you're in love with the industry and whatever.
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But in your case, it seems in both your cases, it seems that number one, you're coming from
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a variety of other places, you've both done maths and you know, Mukul might even have
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foreseen the 2008 financial crisis coming if you were studying Fannie Mae and Fannie
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Mac and we can't blame it on you.
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And he didn't foresee it, says Jessica.
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A lot of friends give him credit for that and I can tell you he didn't.
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No, I say very openly, of course, I didn't see that kind of crash.
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I mean, you knew there was something wrong happening and that I can talk about that.
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But the kind of crash, no, no question.
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I wouldn't have predicted that Lehman would have gone bankrupt.
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But do you think the sort of different perspectives and the different Nazarias sort of added something
#
extra to what you were as actors and maybe added something to your journey?
#
I think it's hard for me to answer that question, first of all, you know, perspective about
#
your own life or to say what influenced you is very hard to answer.
#
But I think all actors draw from their own experiences, right?
#
You have to draw from your own experiences of what you've done, people you've met, etc.
#
But that's not to say that people who haven't necessarily had other careers haven't really
#
had other experiences to draw from.
#
So I'm not sure that I would, you know, agree entirely with that.
#
I think, you know, everybody draws from, I mean, some people come from troubled childhoods
#
and maybe that helps them in some scene.
#
But it's not to say that, you know, somebody else, you know, may or may not really do that.
#
So yeah, all your experiences add up.
#
I don't think you necessarily need multiple careers.
#
That's my simple point of view.
#
I sort of agree with that because I, in fact, my interest in this career started because
#
I realized when I was at FTI that no experience of mine will not be able to help me become
#
a better actor, you know.
#
So it's just about how you use that experience in your work.
#
And that is, that's the craft of it.
#
So it's, it's not about going and looking out for newer experiences or varied experiences.
#
It's about how you, how a memory of any experience stays with you and how you sort of mold that
#
into a particular role and the choices you make along that way, along that path.
#
So I think that's, that's the thing about it.
#
I want to kind of explore a couple of dichotomies now, sort of two very separate things sort
#
And one is the dichotomy of sensibilities, like, you know, you've mentioned how watching
#
a scene of Patel Panchali made an impression on you and then no doubt watching Great World
#
Cinema at FTI, I would also have done the same and, you know, Mukul was at Lee Strasberg
#
And it seems to me that, for example, when we compare Bollywood or we compare Indian
#
mainstream cinema to world cinema, we just make a category error because these are just
#
two completely different art forms, even though they look similar, because your sensibilities
#
You're aiming for different things.
#
There is a different notion of realism and, you know, how you should tell a story and
#
And equally, I think some of this would also then reflect in the kind of acting that is
#
Like many of our Bollywood diggages, and of course, I won't take any names, but many of
#
our superstars of the past, if you look at them from the Western prism of what good acting
#
is, it would just seem like they are ridiculously hamming it up or they're overacting or overperforming
#
and it's very performative.
#
It's emoting as that unique Indian word goes.
#
I don't think anyone outside India uses the word emoting.
#
And at the same time, what has sort of happened coinciding with the, you know, the trajectory
#
of your careers is that there is that other sensibility also coming into play where we
#
do in Indian cinema today and Indian web series today and entertainment today, see a lot of
#
acting which even from a Western sensibility also would be considered outstanding, including
#
some of the work that you guys have done.
#
So how was it navigating this?
#
Because you know, first of all, like what is your personal philosophy and approach towards
#
How do you view acting and how do you view cinema and how do you define good cinema?
#
And then secondly, and I'm assuming that a certain part of that at least is influenced
#
by these global sensibilities.
#
And then secondly, you are in Bombay trying to make a living where not everybody shares
#
And when you, you know, go to a set to act, the expectations might be, you know, your
#
expectations and that of whoever you're working for might be quite different, though obviously
#
in your respective filmographies, you've worked with people who share that more kind
#
But how do you sort of think about this and navigate this and does the awareness of this
#
then, you know, play a part?
#
I think that first I don't, while I was influenced by a lot of world cinema and I got an opportunity
#
to watch a lot of films at FDI that many people didn't and I also got an opportunity to watch
#
them on film, which I'm still very proud of, not on DVDs or digital.
#
So while that was very exciting, I think that just by growing up in this country, Bollywood
#
is a big influence in your life, you know, and you cannot deny it even if you want to,
#
you know, and I never wanted to.
#
I embraced it as much as I was as mesmerized by Sridevi as I was by Isabella Hopad.
#
You know, so I did not judge either.
#
I thought that both were different experiences.
#
As far as your position in a film is concerned as an actor, you're in a very strange sort
#
of situation and actually a lot of people are in that situation or in a film set.
#
So what's very exciting to me and also very irritating to me very many times is that filmmaking
#
is a very, very, it's a deeply personal process, but also a very collaborative one.
#
And as an actor, you don't have much agency, you know, you are pretty much at the mercy
#
of a director, cinematographer, art director, your co-actor, so many things which are making
#
this moment or the scene happen for you.
#
But fortunately or unfortunately, you're the face of it, you know.
#
So you're sort of put in this spot where everybody's abilities have to sort of sink in together
#
for you to be able to do something.
#
So it's actually a very strange situation to be in.
#
I totally love being in that situation because I love giving into somebody else's vision
#
because it takes responsibility off my shoulders.
#
And at the same time, I am a fairly important part of making that vision happen.
#
So I'm very happy to function like that.
#
So I enjoy this position, but it can be very scary.
#
And sometimes this position is scary to me when I can totally live a moment, but I don't
#
know how it's going to be put together.
#
So very often the politics of it is something that I get scared about.
#
I feel like will the politics of this film be in sync with mine or not?
#
So when I agree to do a project or not, it's my first concern is the politics of this project
#
So the politics of my character might not be in sync with mine, which is great, in fact,
#
because I'd love to play, for example, a right-wing troll, you know, but and just to understand
#
And when you're working on a role, you have to you can't be judging your own character.
#
So it would really require a lot of empathy and expansion of the heart of the heart to
#
be able to understand somebody who is completely different from you.
#
But it's important to me that the overall politics of what I've agreed to work on is
#
something that I is something that is aligned with mine.
#
So that's the situation that you are in as an actor.
#
So that's one thing that I always look out for when, you know, collaborating with somebody.
#
So the sensibility of a project is something that I find you have indications for it, like
#
somebody can narrate their story to you.
#
You can see their previous work and you can get a sense of where they're coming from.
#
But really, it's a gamble.
#
You know, how it turns out could be very, very different from what you had imagined.
#
So as an actor, you're always in that position, you know, because you've lost.
#
You don't have any control after you've shot for the film and largely a lot of work on
#
the film is about the editing, is about the sound and all of that.
#
That's like a whole other thing that's going to happen to your work.
#
And you have no control, you have no say in the matter.
#
Nobody shows the film to you till it's done.
#
I mean, you might see clips of it at the dub and all of that, but you don't have control
#
over that side of things, you know.
#
So I mean, yeah, those are the things that concern me while I'm working with somebody
#
But you can't really have surety on how this project is going to turn out.
#
So sometimes when I watch something that I've worked on, I feel that maybe artistically,
#
it's not aligning with my sensibility.
#
Maybe the politics is fine, but you know, it's not really aligning with my sensibilities
#
It's not what I had imagined it to be, but sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised also.
#
I mean, when I saw Delhi Crime, I was very proud of what the director, the editor and
#
the cinematographer had done, because in spite of the fact that I had read the script and
#
I was very assured that Ritchie's politics were totally in sync with mine.
#
And so were his sensibilities were of a very high standard, but I was very moved by how
#
they managed to humanize these rapists, you know, who through the whole series you're
#
and and just that's just in the lensing, the editing, how you've lensed the character,
#
how long you've held the shot on them and how you how you've lit them, you know.
#
So it's it's just about those things and I was so moved by that.
#
So in this case, this particular case, what I watched superseded my expectations of the
#
sensibility of the project, but there have been other cases in Mirzapur.
#
For example, I felt like the intent was very good and the writing was very good.
#
But I felt like the way we visualize a woman who is who's acknowledged as a sexual being
#
is still we still have a very long way to go, because I think our visuals are still
#
That's in fact what I felt when I watched Mirzapur as well.
#
Yeah, this is a very difficult question you've asked.
#
I mean, this whole notion and I think it's something that I think about, you know, because
#
as an actor, you always wonder, what is good acting and what is not good acting?
#
You know, you read stuff that other people have said about it, because obviously if you're
#
doing something you want to do it really well.
#
And again, you know, it's also very personal because you're always influenced by what you
#
have liked and not liked.
#
You know, I think at the end of the day, just like a director tells stories that he or she
#
is wants to tell, much like that, you want to do performances that you have enjoyed watching.
#
And that changes actually over time.
#
And it's very hard to quantify it and say this is what is good and this is what is bad.
#
I mean, growing up, I actually haven't had as much exposure to world cinema.
#
I have watched a lot of Bollywood.
#
Some things I have loved, some things I've hated.
#
Even Western films I've seen, I've seen a lot more of the Hollywood blockbusters than,
#
you know, seeing a lot of foreign language films, which is more something that, you know,
#
is more exposed to now.
#
So a lot of things are influenced by and even within the realm of what you watch, I feel,
#
you know, there are things that you like more and think you like less.
#
To me, a good performance is something that moves me in any way.
#
And if I shut off, you know, and I say, no, this is fake.
#
I don't buy this or I don't believe it.
#
Then that's not really necessarily a good performance.
#
I mean, if I think back to some of the TV shows I watched in the 80s, you know, there
#
are some shows that we loved and thought they were great and you go back and watch them
#
today and a lot of them are unwatchable to me.
#
And I think it's a function of having seen other things, you know, so I wouldn't put
#
it is the classic problem of high art versus low art.
#
How do you how do you want to put a line on it?
#
But I think the more you end up seeing and it's great that there's so much competition
#
and people are influenced by things that happen across the world both ways.
#
And the more you watch, you're drawn to things that then, you know, take it to a slightly
#
Then something that you liked earlier may not, you know, hold weight as much.
#
And it's also a hard question to answer.
#
I mean, is something what is over the top?
#
You know, sometimes the genre of a film, I mean, was chaplain over the top because, you
#
know, there's a lot of slapstick stuff he's doing.
#
But that within that genre, it works, you know, it works.
#
And that makes you laugh and that makes you feel okay, this is great and you can watch
#
But it's it's very hard to sometimes and it's just it's a constant struggle.
#
It's a good question because it's something that you're never sure of and when you take
#
on a new project, you're trying to visualize it.
#
I mean, very often it's you know, you need to read the whole script to understand what
#
is the vision of what is the you know, what is the genre that is going to fit into what
#
is the style this is going to be to understand, you know, what your role in it is because
#
it has to fit within that and like Jessica said, it's very it's very difficult because
#
sometimes you don't know what the director wants and the better ones are those who are
#
able to, you know, communicate that to you in a way that you understand, you know, then
#
what is the style and and at some level you'd like to do work that you would like watching.
#
You know, because then it's easier to sort of, you know, fit into that and it could be
#
You could do something very slapstick and that's great.
#
You could do something that's, you know, totally different.
#
But as long as it's something you like doing, I'm not saying we always manage to do that
#
because when you're working, you end up doing a lot of other things and plus you sometimes
#
don't know how things are going to turn out.
#
But yeah, I think it's a very difficult question to answer because and it's constantly changing,
#
you know, what is good acting I see some performance somewhere and now of course we have so many
#
shows from across the world that are just coming into our living room without making
#
any effort and you know, you see something and you think oh, this is interesting how
#
someone has done something and it's sometimes different from what you know, you might have
#
So yeah, you know, what's good and bad I think is a function of what what you are drawn to
#
and that also keeps changing.
#
You know, I think what we may, you know, it's possible that what we think is good acting
#
today, you know, 30 years down the line, someone will say this was very mediocre.
#
No, and that's very perceptive, you know, to me, like you said, it's not just about
#
a difference between high art and low art but taste change over time like again like
#
you have tried watching the shows of the 1980s when one gets him on YouTube like a Joe has
#
in the game and all of that and it's it's and then then you wonder about yourself.
#
What was like always is so but age wise in the game was the one right because I remember
#
laughing as a kid when I saw it and we are one of the better shows and I watched it again.
#
I mean, it is truly unwatchable for me right now.
#
I feel that that's why when we diss a lot of TV soaps that are on right now on the last
#
decade, it's wholly possible that they're being watched by a whole lot of people who
#
have got access to cable for the first time in the last 10 or 20 years and once they start
#
seeing better things, they will also no longer like it.
#
You know, it's just yeah, no, in fact, the thought struck me yesterday.
#
I was kind of out on the road and I saw this very old vintage car which looked so incredibly
#
ugly and all of that and then I realized that wait a minute when I was in my early 20s in
#
Bombay, the Mitsubishi Lancer was the most beautiful freaking beast you could aspire
#
to right and I saw one of those models a couple of days back on the street and I was like,
#
my God, what an ugly thing and wait a minute.
#
This is that, you know, and and then you wonder whether the kind of work that you do today
#
I was sort of, you know, what you were saying, what you know, Rasika was speaking about,
#
you know, the approaches to acting, I was reminded of an old episode I did on the art
#
of translation with Arunavasena who's translated like 40 books from Bengali to English and
#
he said something very interesting there where he said that when we were speaking about languages
#
and, you know, thinking in one language and writing in the other and he made the point
#
that Indians, because we are so multilingual, are very good at quote shifting so we can
#
automatically effortlessly shift from, you know, being natural in one language to being
#
natural in another language and it seems to me that in some way these different schools
#
of acting as it were are also like different languages and it's not that you necessarily
#
have to speak one or the other language but you can just adapt whichever one and even
#
mix them up as required.
#
Does that kind of make any kind of sense?
#
No, I mean, I'm also confused about the schools of acting in the sense my, I haven't, you
#
know, like I haven't studied formal theater except at Lee Strasburg where I studied and
#
they were very fixed on the method, you know, and that was their big thing that, you know,
#
you have to follow the method but even within their, you know, it and there was the opposition
#
to the Stella Adler School, which is, you know, not a few blocks away that's a different
#
style and you have this and even within the method I found my personal view was a lot
#
of the teachers who were teaching us understood the method to be very different and, you know,
#
they would interpret it and they would have their own teaching styles and but the one
#
thing that I think stuck with me from what a lot of people have said and a teacher said
#
and otherwise also, you know, other theater people you worked with is whatever works for
#
you something someone tells you works for you and you hold on to it and something someone
#
else says works for you and yeah, I think I think that's that's it for me actually.
#
Yeah, so, you know, the thing is what's exciting to me about my work is that there's no one
#
way to do it. So in in in once and there's no one basic set of rules that you have to
#
follow either. So you change it up as you go along and so I wouldn't say that what I'm
#
doing in one film could probably even qualify as being called a language, you know, because
#
there are the rules are not so set, you know, it's actually very experiential and it's
#
actually very something that I improvised along the way. So yeah, your work on another
#
project automatically does become different. But neither of them would be something that
#
you would be able to use again somewhere else. The other experience will be an entirely different
#
experience. And what I'm interested in earlier on in my career was I was like, anytime anybody
#
would ask me, so what is your process? And I was like, my process is that I'm looking
#
for a process. And now I after having worked for around 12 years, I've realized that they
#
can be no one process for yourself. And that's the beauty of it. And I don't want there to
#
be that one process. Yeah, there can be techniques that you rely on on a day where you're not
#
completely there where you're not having a very good day as an actor where you're not
#
able to be there for that part and that moment. So there are techniques that you can fall
#
back on. But there is no one way to do it. And there shouldn't be is my assessment of
#
it. So far, I might change my mind next month. But but this is how I feel about it today.
#
No, that's pretty insightful. And if I try to sort of process it in my language, what
#
you're saying is that look, we have a set of tactics that we can use in any situation,
#
but there's not necessarily one strategy, you know, that can differ according to the
#
task. But then my follow up question, Jessica would be that even if there is no one process
#
per se, and it differs from project to project, is there then a set of values or an acting
#
ethic or an approach towards the characters that you play that is common something common
#
there that you, you know, maybe the way that you approach the characters or approach your
#
role or just the ethic that you bring to the whole craft that is common and that you know,
#
that is common to everything. There are certain ethics that I have for myself. But I don't
#
know if anybody else follows them. You know, I think if you I don't know if Mukul does,
#
if you ask any other actor, I don't they might have their own set. But some of the things
#
that I am very, very pucca about, and I don't let go of one is that I will never ever in
#
my life, tell my co actor what to do. Never. In fact, the beauty of a moment between two
#
actors is the uncertainty of it and the many the number of things that it can be. And the
#
beautiful moment between two actors is when you can't put your finger on the emotion,
#
because you can only put your finger on the emotion when somebody is emoting. And that
#
in my opinion is not good acting, you know, good acting is when you when there's confusion
#
and there's a lot of so many other things and when there is when you can't put your
#
finger on one single emotion, you know, and there are so many things that play. And the
#
moment you try and if you instruct your co actor on what to do, you're basically asking
#
them to do something which is convenient for you. And therefore that you're removing the
#
possibility of magic, you are at the altar of efficiency, you know, so because you're
#
so insecure or nervous about trying to get a moment right and trying to get it executed
#
efficiently, you're losing out the possibility of magic. And you know, few times that magic
#
happens in the time between action and cut, it is so precious that you feel like my years
#
of struggle and standing in Ushivara outside studios and waiting for auditions with my
#
makeup melting has been worth it. So that's the beauty of that moment is so, so much that
#
it makes me feel sad when people let go of it. When I see people letting go of it, I'm
#
like, Oh my God, you guys just like lost the opportunity to have a moment which was something
#
that nobody would have thought out or logically understood or rehearsed, you know. So are
#
there specific moments of magic that you remember from your career like this, which made you
#
feel that I need more of this, for example, you've referred to the penultimate scene
#
and kiss with Irfan, which you, you know, you went and reshot and you said you did eight
#
takes and they were all so magical. And I'm presuming that was kind of one of those. But
#
apart from that, you know, is this something that you started with? Or is it something
#
that you gradually discovered? Were there these moments of magic that you can point
#
to and say that, you know, yes, you know, that moment happened because I let it happen
#
because I didn't try to sort of drive the process too hard. Yeah, so kiss was the first
#
time it happened, as I remember it. And that's why it was so special. And it was also a kiss
#
I was in one sense, the perfect film for an actor. The environment allowed you to thrive
#
as a performer, you know, the director was somebody who was very sensitive to actors
#
protected us from every other thing happening on the set. The bunch of co actors that I
#
was working with, I mean, I had a co actor like Irfan, like the Lothama, like Diska,
#
all people who are very accomplished and very much on the same page as I am about trying
#
to make a scene work, you know. So in that sense, kiss was like a perfect experience
#
and not the kind of experience that you find on other projects. But as I had more and more
#
experience, I realized that I started enjoying fighting everything to make my moment work,
#
you know, that that became my thrill. Like I was like, okay, all of you can yell and
#
scream around me, but I will still find my moment while I'm shooting, because that is
#
what will remain. Nobody will remember that the light was not working and that the sun
#
was going to go down in two minutes. And you had only three minutes to get this shot done.
#
And that your co actor forgot their line. And the million other things that can go wrong
#
on shoot and that people were yelling and screaming at each other. So I realized earlier
#
it used to really bother me. And I would really try and find my focus and concentration and
#
go away and try and, you know, be like, guys, please don't interfere with my work and don't
#
make this not work for me. But now I will just stand in the middle of all of it. And
#
I will say, throw anything at me. And I will still try and make that short work for myself.
#
The other thing that I do, besides one of the other rules that I have for myself is
#
I will never play out a moment that is in the script before. I'm very wary of playing
#
it away before the short happens. So I'll read it a number of times. I might think different
#
things about it every time I read it. Every time I begin to read the scene, I might approach
#
it completely differently. But I will never decide that this is how I'm going to play
#
this moment. But what I will do is I will equip my character with a world. I will make
#
my character have a world that they exist in. So I will do things around that character,
#
which need not necessarily even feature in the film. But somewhere it will help. And
#
that's also the most fun way to work on a character. Otherwise, it's really boring.
#
I don't know how else to do it. But basically, for example, for Kista, I read a lot of Punjabi
#
poetry. I listened to a lot of Punjabi music, which ranged from Punjabi MC to Reshma. It
#
was that varied. And I just thought that because the character I was playing with somebody
#
who was very free and one with nature, she's like this tribal Punjabi girl. So I felt like
#
I needed to, maybe these things would help. I don't know if they did or didn't or how
#
exactly they help. But I felt like I was providing a world for Neeli, this character Kista, to
#
live in. Now, I was not deciding that I will do this in this scene. And that's something
#
that I've tried to follow through the work that I've done. And that, I believe, leads
#
to magical moments. And to give you another example of a magical moment was this moment
#
in Delhi Crime, where I play Neeti Singh, who is a probationer officer, like they call
#
it in the police. She's finished her training at the academy and is in the six months field
#
training. And she's found herself in this job that the DCP has given her. And there
#
are protests at India Gate and she's asked to go manage those. And while I was shooting
#
for that, and in the script at this time, she's been assigned to be at the hospital
#
with the family and the girl. So she's been there and she's been up for three nights.
#
And right now, the character is in this space where all she wants is she wants the girl
#
to be okay. That's all she's focused. At least that's how I understood it at that point.
#
And then we are shooting for this scene. And there are these protesters and there are these
#
bunch of junior artists who've been organized and there's complete chaos on set that day
#
because it's a very hard shot to pull off. And the moment you have many junior artists,
#
things become very difficult production wise and everybody's sort of wondering what to
#
do. And there's a lot of chaos that you have to find moments within. So I remember she's
#
holding the shield and she comes out. And on that day of shoot, I came out and I looked
#
at these protesters and they were protesting against the police. And I felt so bad. I just
#
felt shattered. I said, no, we work so hard for them and they're not realizing that all
#
I'm trying to make this world better for them, but they don't understand it. And I felt really
#
hurt to the point of almost feeling teary. And I hadn't realized that that's how, I hadn't
#
thought that this is what is going to happen to me in that scene. And that was not even
#
the mandate of the scene. And that's not even anything that's written into the scene. And
#
I don't even know if it shows on screen or it doesn't, but it was a big moment for me.
#
That's when I felt like I had begun to believe in the world that I had tried to create. And
#
you know, I had a question for later, but it seems a natural follow up question now
#
that you've sort of mentioned this moment. So I'll ask it now, which is that, you know,
#
does immersing yourself in the role also then change the person you are and the way you
#
view the world? For example, a couple of examples which came to mind from what you said about
#
your work earlier is one, of course, this that you felt that Delhi was more of a safe
#
zone because you felt more empathetic towards the police once you did the film. And the
#
other was you also pointed out that how, you know, playing the role that you did in Manto
#
made you more empathetic towards, you know, your Nani Ji and women of the past on whom
#
you would otherwise have been judgmental or when you were sort of a fiery feminist in
#
college. And so do roles kind of change the way that, you know, you view the world and
#
in some way change you as well? So usually, I actually feel nervous to romanticize the
#
idea of, you know, being immersed in a role and not being able to come out of it or affecting
#
you in a big way. But I have to say that it does. I have to accept that it does. And taking
#
the example of Delhi crime, I think it did make me very empathetic to the Delhi police
#
and especially this time, this year in February, I felt very uncomfortable with that empathy,
#
you know, and I didn't know what to do with that. It was almost like the memory of that
#
experience remained. And so the empathy with the police remained. But then I was again
#
seeing things happening from the perspective of a civilian. And what I was seeing was not
#
making me feel like I should feel any empathy. But yet there was some empathy. So that dichotomy
#
was making me very uncomfortable. And I guess that was proof of the fact that it does stay
#
with you for a while. But I can't really tell how long it does or does it go away or not
#
or what. And you know, I've listened to a lot of actors talk about similar experiences
#
and they've all and what seems to me seems to be the commonality between what they're
#
saying is that they don't know where it comes up again. You know, for example, Nicole Kidman
#
was talking about her role in Big Little Lies. And there's that abusive relationship and
#
which was very, very beautifully done in the series. And she said, I didn't know that I
#
was so angry because of playing that role that one day when I went back from shoot,
#
I took something and shattered the glass in the bathroom. She said, I am not that person.
#
I don't do this. But this remained with me. And I didn't realize that this was happening
#
to me. And I think when I shot for Hamid also, months after I'd finished shooting for Hamid,
#
I remember I was telling Mukul the story of how I watched this documentary in which Parveena
#
Hangar is talking to this other lady and both are people whose children whose sons had gone
#
missing when they were both 15 years old. And I was recounting this moment. And I didn't
#
realize that it had been with me for a while and I was in tears. And it had been about
#
four or five months and I hadn't realized that I was still carrying some of the grief
#
from there. But you know, I still I feel so scared to even admit to this because I feel
#
that as actors, if you become so conscious of these moments, and if you try and seek,
#
if you try and then recreate magic, it's not going to happen. So I try as much as possible
#
to not remember this, you know, so that I can be open to ways of achieving magical moments
#
like these. It can be open to new ways of achieving magical moments like this. And that
#
I don't then go back to the same way that I did it, that I happened to find it in Hamid
#
or happened to find it in Delhi crime or happened to find it in Gissa.
#
And Mokul, I have a sort of related question for you, which is like a really weird question,
#
which I can ask only you. And you'll realize why when I come to it, which is that in my
#
experience as a poker player, I often realize that and this non poker players often don't
#
realize the highs and lows of emotions that are involved in playing poker, I've often
#
found that poker can really bring out the worst elements of your character in a sense
#
it's a process of self discovery, where you'll act in particular ways where you're on severe
#
tilt and all of that and later you'll look back and you'll take a step outside of yourself
#
and you'll kind of realize that shit, you know, and you learn a little bit about yourself
#
also when you do that in those low moments and even the high moments where you can overreact
#
to that as well. And it strikes me that as an actor, part of what you're doing when you're
#
immersing yourself in a role is that you are taking a step out of yourself to that meta
#
level where you're sort of, you know, as you're immersing yourself in a character, you're
#
also taking that step back and looking at sort of the motivations and the emotions and
#
the way this person would behave and the way all of that plays. So just in terms of sort
#
of self awareness, does the acting process and I don't know if you share my feelings
#
about poker in this context, but does the acting process, does it lead to at some level
#
a sort of greater self awareness of your own behaviors and motivations and even your own
#
performative actions as it were? There's a lot there. I mean, you know, I think this
#
whole thing of I'm going to address first your comparison with, you know, those moments
#
in poker when you feel you're in there and you're sort of observing yourself from the
#
outside with acting that happens. But you try and shut it out because the minute you
#
start being aware of that whole of that, then you might lose that moment also, you know,
#
if you're very conscious of because sometimes I think I would use a different word for what
#
Rassica said, you know, when she talked about magic, I say sometimes you surprise yourself,
#
you know, sometimes something happens and you surprise yourself and and that feels really
#
great. But if you think about it too much, sometimes that actually takes away or ruins
#
the whole thing because then you're trying to analyze why that may have happened or what
#
you did and that kind of destroys it and I think that might relate. I don't know if you
#
relate to that in the poker table, but you know, sometimes if you're sometimes you're
#
just in the zone, right? You're doing you're playing really well, you're figuring things
#
out and if you try and analyze it too much as to what am I doing and trying to impose
#
rules on it, you might just shatter that whole thing for yourself. I mean, it might work
#
better when you're on till to say I need to get out of the zone. But that's what I feel.
#
I mean, it's it's it's it's hard to know. I mean, I see I look at acting as a sport
#
in some sense, right? It's hard to know what you're doing, right? You know, it's very hard
#
to figure that out. I mean, you know and to answer your earlier question, which you said,
#
you know, which what are your rules or what are the things you follow? I think you, you
#
know, you you try and get certain things in place, you know, certain routines in place.
#
Maybe you learn your lines, you know, you try and see how this character might behave
#
otherwise or practice in those ways so that a lot of the routine is taken care of and
#
you allow yourself more chances for something wonderful to happen where you would be closer
#
to reacting like me if the character would react. But how it happens when it happens,
#
I don't know. And at some level, I think I'm sort of echoing here, but I say I don't want
#
to analyze it too much also because I sometimes feel that that might take away, you know,
#
from how that happens. I mean, you know, you try and keep the routines going and it's like
#
you pull line and then you just hope that, you know, the ball, you know, takes the edge
#
of, you know, you you you increase the probability of something going right and that's perhaps
#
how I look at it, you know, that you just you can't. And the other problem, of course,
#
is that which is probably indicating all that I'm saying is that very often you have moments
#
when you think, oh my God, I did something fantastic here. You know, like there was maybe
#
because you surprised yourself and that feels great. And when you watch the film or you
#
watch whatever you've shot, you know, months later and you're looking for that because
#
you think, oh my God, this was just fantastic, you know, and even the and sometimes your
#
coact also feels it, you know, they feel that we had something here. This really was something
#
that worked and it looks very ordinary because there's so much else to it, right? It's also
#
its context within the story how it's edited everything else and there are some other things
#
you see which you thought were very mundane and they strike you as oh that looks really
#
wonderful, you know, when you didn't really look at it very seriously. So at some level
#
I've stopped or I try not to get too excited about a moment that I thought really worked
#
and then vice-versa, you know, like sometimes, you know, something just looks fantastic,
#
which you thought was very, you know, you just did it. It wasn't like a big deal and
#
you didn't feel, you know, it's not like, you know, the co-actor and you said, oh wow,
#
that really felt good. And I think a lot of it is, is that, you know, you surprised yourself,
#
but it may not have worked or it's not just that. It's also on the edit, you know, in
#
the context of the broader storytelling. It wasn't a big deal, you know. Yeah. So I don't
#
know, but that's, that's what I feel about it. Yeah. Yeah. No, what I meant was not in
#
the context of in the moment, because in the moment I'm in a Virat Kohli spring, a cover
#
drive and he is self aware of his elbow angle and his footwork. Obviously he's going to
#
get out immediately, but in a broader sense of when he looks back at why he's been getting
#
out in single digits and he says, Oh, my stance changed a little bit. So the angle of the
#
bat and that's why I've been edging it. And I would just imagine that, you know, one of
#
the things that we don't do as human beings too much is examine why we do the things that
#
we do, why we react the things that we do. We just kind of live life without thinking
#
about it. And it strikes me that acting is one profession where you are actually required
#
very often to take a step back and examine a human being, which is this imagined human
#
being who's, you know, skin you will inhabit for a while and think about why they are the
#
way they are and why they do the things they do. And would that sort of habit of thinking
#
and a greater self-awareness then also percolate into other aspects of your life was my sort
#
of broader question. I think I did a lot of that unnecessarily myself to myself. Anyway,
#
I would always think why the hell am I behaving like this? Why am I so angry about something?
#
And I'm not sure I got the right answers. So I think I was like that. Anyway, I would
#
always analyze myself, but I think your point is well taken that if there is one singular
#
aspect of, you know, playing or inhabiting a character is that you have to think like
#
that character, obviously, which is, you know, I mean, and if again, if there's a singular
#
thing that I look at and I can clearly say I think is bad acting or bad performance or
#
bad depiction of something is if I don't believe that the characters believes what they say,
#
you know that they must at all points in time and that's true for, you know, you call it
#
bad writing. You call it bad direction. You call it bad acting and everything else. You
#
have to inhabit the world of that person, you know, and convince us that you believe
#
what you say, you know, and why you do what you say. And I think that's probably a reason
#
why maybe people in the arts, whether they're writers, directors tend to be a little more
#
left-wing, right? Because you tend to, I mean, whether you are, you get more empathetic because
#
you are in the profession or whether because you are empathetic to enter that profession,
#
I don't know. But there tends to be that sense of, of identifying with, you know, why other
#
people do what they do. And I think that moment that Jessica talked about, you know, empathizing
#
with the Delhi police was, is a fantastic one. And I think despite all that we may try,
#
we are constantly at a point now in society where we are just losing empathy for a person
#
who's on the other side, you know, of the political divide and it's, it's, it's, uh,
#
it doesn't help. Yeah. And it seems to me that, you know, great art embraces complexity
#
and what we find in our modern times is that the political discourse is so simplistic and
#
polarized where it is not just necessary to argue that the other side is wrong, but it
#
is necessary to paint them as evil. And, uh, you know, that's my sort of big lament about
#
the discourse, but before we get carried away into that particular digression, I think we
#
should take a commercial break because I promised two dichotomies and having gotten one over
#
with before the break, it is only natural that we save the other one for after the break.
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right. Unseen for 15% off at indiancolors.com. Welcome back to the scene and the unseen I'm
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chatting with Rasika Dougal and Mukul Chadha about the acting life and their journey in
#
Mumbai and the entertainment industry here. And you know, the second dichotomy that I
#
sort of mentioned is again, something that's kind of been playing out over the course of
#
your careers in the sense which is more and more outsiders coming into the film industry,
#
so to say, like back in the day when I first came to Mumbai in the 90s, it was a very constricted
#
kind of space, it was a particular kind of person in the film industry, another particular
#
kind of person in the TV industry, they had their own sort of sensibilities. And in the
#
time that you've been growing in your careers here and pursuing that, I mean, just in these
#
12 years, like you mentioned, Rasika, and I suppose similar period of time for you Mukul,
#
is that so much has kind of changed. And obviously, a lot of that is because of the scope of the
#
work, like I often sort of, you know, the analogy that comes to my mind when I think
#
of what's happened to the entertainment industry in Mumbai is the IPL. Because what the IPL
#
did was that before the IPL, when it came to cricket, there were a few superstars who
#
would play test cricket and make it to the top, but everybody else was basically, there
#
was nothing for them to do, it was just lifelong frustration. And it seemed to me that at one
#
point, Bollywood was like that, like in the 90s, I remember telling friends of mine about
#
how the cafes were so full of people who've been struggling for like 20 years and will
#
never get anywhere. And it's so sad and poignant. But how that has changed is just in the same
#
way that the IPL sort of opened up opportunities for a much wider pool of people. It seems
#
that you know, all these web series is coming and just a changing landscape of entertainment
#
has made it easier for outsiders like you guys to actually come in and hope to build
#
a career and a body of work here. So tell me a little bit about, you know, what was
#
the landscape of the entertainment industry? When you guys embarked upon these careers,
#
like what did it look like then? How has it changed? And how have your views of it changed
#
I think that's a great analogy given in terms of the IPL. And I think what the OTT revolution
#
has done for acting or anything related to content creation is absolutely true. I mean,
#
there's just so much more opportunity for everyone. When I first became an actor, I
#
don't, the landscape was different, no doubt. And I don't think I gave as much thought to
#
it. It wasn't that well thought out a decision that, okay, this is this career makes sense
#
because the dynamics of this industry are such. In fact, if I had done that, I might
#
not have ever become an actor. I became an actor because I wanted to act. You know, I
#
did theater to start with. It's improv, which I still do. And then, you know, whatever roles
#
I could get, I would want to do them. But yeah, when you have very singular stories,
#
which are two hours long, and by definition, you know, it's going to be about one or three
#
protagonists and in a superstar driven world where, you know, the spoils, all the spoils
#
go to a few people. It's very hard for anybody else to break into it. And also, if you're
#
not going to make a breakthrough in your early 20s, then you're probably, you know, going
#
to be limited to playing fringe characters, which, you know, I mean, we've seen so many
#
good actors. And when I started acting, so many wonderful actors I've seen spend so much
#
time doing roles on the margins, which don't really, I mean, it's not the length of the
#
role, but the role doesn't, you know, give vent to, you know, their talent and what they
#
can do. That has obviously changed with, you know, technology and the ODT platforms, because
#
it's not just more content coming out, but it's different kinds of stories being told
#
where, you know, it's such a large cast where you don't have to be the protagonist of the
#
story to have an interesting, you know, graph. There's so many, you know, characters who
#
may not be the main leads who have very interesting stories. It's, it's far more novelistic and
#
it's telling, right? I mean, the way the whole thing is done. And that's been wonderful.
#
I mean, I'm eternally grateful to it. I don't think, I mean, the biggest thing that I've
#
done is the office. I don't think that would have happened. That wouldn't have happened
#
without the ODT revolution. And I would never have been considered. I mean, in fact, the
#
office is the first show where I was called for an audition to play the lead. I have never
#
been called for an audition for a lead role before that, because that just wasn't possible.
#
I mean, leave aside obviously some, you know, short films or an ad, because that's totally
#
a different thing, but you would not even considered for that part, you know, and this
#
is the first time you're being considered the fact that someone, I mean, I remember
#
the casting director, Kavish called me up and said, we're considering auditioning you
#
for the lead. Would you be interested? And I was like, where is the question in this?
#
You know, obviously I would be interested. This is the first time someone's even asking
#
me if I would audition for the lead part. So that was, that's great. And I think it's,
#
it's been wonderful. I hope it continues as long as it can, because as far as I'm concerned,
#
I think, you know, I just like to do good work and, and it, it just, you know, as much
#
of it that can exist is great. Yeah. And I sort of, you know, you sort of preempted a
#
question I was going to ask, but it's a great observation, which is I'd recently written
#
a post on my newsletter, which was called a meditation on form is about how the form
#
in which you write can change what you write and therefore can change the writer. For example,
#
you know, blogging gives you the freedom to go beyond the dictates of the 800 word op-eds.
#
So you can write an 80 word observation or an 8,000 word essay. And when you can stretch
#
out like that, you are often compelled to think deeper. Like when I do three hour conversations
#
on my podcast, for example, I'm compelled to go deeper, you know, give a certain amount
#
of respect to the guests because I'm no longer playing, you know, gotcha in a 20 minute interview,
#
which is what so much of a television is all about. And the form changes, not just the
#
content, but it changes the writer because of the way that you are then forced to approach
#
it. And what you were saying about, you know, the novelistic approach that is now possible.
#
Like I remember one of the reasons I was so blown away by the wire when I first saw it
#
was that it was so novelistic. You had so many characters who were treated like main
#
characters and the stories unfolding leisurely through the many episodes. And it was like
#
an epiphany for me that because before that, I thought all cinema was really like a short
#
story, not like a novel. You had like one linear plot line and a couple of main characters.
#
And my sort of question to Rasika also, you know, sort of elaborating upon that is that
#
did this and I'm sure that this form changed the kind of stories and the kind of characters.
#
And is that something that you saw changing? Like I recently saw an interview of Shweta
#
Tripathi where she said this thing, which kind of moved me, which is she was asked about
#
what her dream roles were. And she said that, look, all my dream roles are roles. Whenever
#
I think of something that's a dream role to me is something that's been played by a man.
#
You know, none of these roles that women play are things that I would necessarily aspire
#
to. And I remember Seema Pawar also saying somewhere that, listen, where are the films
#
that are dealing with the issues of women past 50? That there is still a landscape of
#
possibility open out there, especially when it comes to female characters. I mean, looking
#
at your work, obviously, you've, you know, gotten the opportunity to create strong characters
#
and you made them your own. But just looking at that sort of landscape in general, as it
#
is evolving, is the lament premature because things are changing in the right direction?
#
Or is it something that you think is, you know, still a problem that the sort of the
#
scope of the roles that someone like you gets is not as vast as the scope that a comparable
#
I think that the scope is not as vast still, but it's much better than earlier. So in that
#
sense, yeah, the long form storytelling has helped that because otherwise the first victim
#
of a script edit would be the female character. And that was something which was making it
#
very difficult for people like me to get any interesting parts to play, you know, because
#
unless you're the female lead of something, and even the female lead in a mainstream Bollywood
#
film doesn't have much to do as we know. But for example, when Mirzapur was offered to
#
me, and I remember I read the script, and at that time, I had already shot for Manto.
#
So Karen Anshuman, who was one of the directors of season one, he said, you know, I don't
#
know if you want to do this, because you're doing a female lead, so to say, in a in a
#
film. So I don't know if you want to do this. And when I read the script, I said, I thought
#
to myself, this is a great part, and especially for me to experiment with something like this,
#
it's not a part that I would normally get cast in. If they were thinking of it stereotypically,
#
they might have gotten somebody who had done roles like that, or had had a different body
#
type or something like that. So I was very excited about it. But I remember thinking
#
if this was a film, I would have been really nervous about this character, because she
#
would have probably not had any space. But because this is a series, there is room for
#
her to exist. You know, I've noticed that even very well meaning films where the director
#
might want to really give attention to a character finally, when you edit the film, and you have
#
to keep it a certain length and all of that, the female character suffers a lot. It didn't
#
happen in Manto because Nandita really would really wanted to make something of Safiya.
#
And in fact, Safiya was, what was on screen was more than what was on paper. But I've
#
noticed that it's happened in several other films. So yeah, the OTT space has definitely
#
given room for many more characters and therefore female characters. But of course, if there
#
was room only for three, then who would that have gone to with those female characters
#
or female characters? That's something that we don't know. But also I feel that in a lot
#
of because feminism is fashionable, and I'm okay to take it even if it's just fashionable,
#
you know, I'll take that anyway, you know, that's I think that's still a positive thing.
#
But a lot of characters that are written for women are sort of, I mean, I don't know how
#
to describe it. But a lot of times, if it's a female character who's spearheading a show
#
or a film, the characters almost written in a masculine way, you know, so that's something
#
that I'm uncomfortable with. And it's not really celebrating femininity, you know. And
#
but I think the OTT space has sort of done away with a lot of that. Like Shivali's character
#
in, in Delhi crime, you know, to write a story on somebody like Chhaya Sharma, I mean, based
#
on Chhaya Sharma. And that's a good thing. So I think the OTT space has done away with
#
a lot of that. In films, I don't know. I think the moment time becomes a limitation, then
#
the the female characters become get suffer a lot.
#
And I'm sort of just thinking aloud here. But you know, when I was watching Mirza Purwant,
#
I think is profoundly impressive how you did a role that is so different from what you
#
normally do. And you know, where you are required to sort of communicate, you know, smoldering
#
sexuality with just look or a gesture. And it's both minimal and so effective at the
#
same time. So that was very impressive. But the other thing that sort of struck me, which
#
has nothing to sort of do with you is that one tendency that I've noticed in Bollywood,
#
especially among younger directors over the last 10, 15 years or so is and probably in
#
a sense started with, you know, Anurag Kashyap and all is this sort of macho stylism, where
#
you'll have these sort of very stylized set pieces with a lot of violence and a lot of
#
this whole sort of, you know, rustic macho-ness and all of that. And even in Mirza Purwant,
#
I kind of, you know, the gratuitous violence of the, you know, the first scenes and, you
#
know, even later, where it's kind of predictable that, you know, the kata is going to explode
#
in the second hand of that character and they're going to show a bit of the ear or the bit
#
of the hand on the thing and the car drives over it. And it seems very, you know, gratuitous
#
and stylized and almost for its own sake. And a couple of related questions here. And
#
I don't know if you've thought about them. And one of them is that does it sometimes
#
happen that the success of a particular sort of style, like, you know, to go back to literature,
#
people often say that one of the problems with Salman Rushdie winning the Book of Midnight
#
Children is that everyone tried writing like him. So for the next two or three decades,
#
you had young Indian writers who are writing and expressionistic bros, not nearly as well
#
as Rushdie and that kind of, you know, got in the way of literature. So looking at cinema,
#
my, you know, untrained observation from an outsider's eye is that something similar seems
#
to have happened with this kind of sort of macho stylism to repeat that sort of having
#
worked in a particular phase of Bollywood and then everyone kind of repeats it and it's
#
very clever and it makes you feel whatever. But very often the whole is less than the
#
sum of his parts and you have all these beautiful, clever set pieces which don't really add up
#
to something. So my first question is that, do you think that there has been something
#
like this and it is kind of just surrender pictures that a certain kind of film happened
#
to become successful at a certain time and then everybody imitated it or was it necessarily
#
going to happen anyway because this is how people think. And the other question taking
#
off from what, you know, Rasika was saying was that, you know, is this one reason why
#
women characters are often written as if from the male gaze in these sort of narrow ways,
#
you know, are there, you know, enough women writers out there and, you know, is that also
#
changing? I mean, I know I'm rambling a little bit, but what are your thoughts on this?
#
So, you know, in films and especially when something gets mainstream attention and is
#
successful in terms of numbers at the box office, it happens that there's a trend of
#
the same kind of films or the same genre, like horror comedy, for example, has been
#
something which has been working, you know. So, and I think that especially in terms of
#
film distribution and film production, there's so much money involved that people are always
#
tend to follow formula, whatever the formula is at that time. And that I feel happens a
#
lot in films. I'm very pleasantly surprised and grateful that I don't feel that's happening
#
in the OTT space. I feel that there is room for different genres to coexist, like a made
#
in heaven and a Mirzapur, totally different and very successful, you know. And I don't
#
even know either the people at the platforms are picking very carefully or and doing a
#
very good job, or finally, writing because of the long form nature of the content on
#
OTT space, writing is finally getting the importance that it needed to get all this
#
while. So there are many interesting new writers who are writing very interesting content,
#
which is why it's getting made. Or the third thing is that there is no declaration of numbers.
#
Therefore, we might think that both are successful, but maybe one is more successful than the
#
other and we don't know it. You know, I think whatever the reasons is, it's great. Because
#
I feel like a multiplicity of genres are happening in the OTT space and original Indian content,
#
like a panchayat is different from made in heaven is different from Patal Lok is different
#
from Delhi crime, even though Patal Lok and Delhi crime can be sort of, I mean, I wouldn't
#
really describe Patal Lok as just a police procedure, you know, it's, it's, it's an,
#
in my opinion, epic show. It's like, and Delhi crime can be possibly described as a police
#
procedure. So I think there's lots of different stuff happening. And a lot of viewers are
#
watching them. I don't know the exact numbers. And I'm very happy that we don't know the
#
numbers, because I think that's really helping keep this space non-formal.
#
Yeah, that's a, that's a very interesting observation about how a little thing like
#
not knowing the numbers can, you know, stop the industry from kind of getting into a rut.
#
And so I sort of teach this writing course where I talk a little bit about Shakespeare
#
as well. And I keep saying that if Shakespeare lived in modern times, he would of course
#
be at the top of the entertainment world because he was, you know, the Spielberg plus Yash
#
Chopra of his times. And it strikes me now that the most exciting form he would find
#
is the OTT form, because that's where you can really stretch out and build these long
#
epic narratives like, you know, Patal Lok, of course, you're right, is a sociological
#
epic in a sense, much more than just a police procedural. I want to sort of now talk a little
#
bit about the acting life as you've experienced it in the sense that another thing that kind
#
of strikes me is, and especially maybe it's changing now, but especially going back 10
#
years, 12 years, more than that, is that as you were, you know, progressing through your
#
acting career, there must have been a terrible scarcity of good roles that you could really
#
get your teeth into. So does that sometimes lead to self doubt about am I good enough?
#
What am I doing here? Does it lead to a frustration about the choice of career where you say okay,
#
you know, acting, but this is not the time, ecosystem is not developed enough. How do
#
you sort of deal with those frustrations? Do you feel yourself compelled to take offers
#
of roles that might not otherwise excite you or you might not take in an ideal world, but
#
you're like, you know, I have to keep working, I have to kind of keep the fires burning.
#
And I guess this is perhaps exacerbated because you are both actors, right? So if one of you
#
was a banker as one of you once was, then you know, you don't have to kind of worry
#
about stability and all of those things, but you're both actors in Bandra and it's, it's
#
not an easy life. How has that sort of journey been like for you guys?
#
I don't think it was that long ago. I mean, not even going back 10, 12 years. I mean,
#
I think, you know, in any case, I think, I don't know of any actor who hasn't gone through
#
a lot of self-doubt. I think it's something that's endemic to the process. You're constantly,
#
you know, and also the way it works, which is also why I like what we do because, you
#
know, you don't, it's not easy to rest on your laurels. You know, you, you kind of,
#
you're starting from scratch again, which is true for many things, but I think it's
#
more so here. Like you can still go and do a really bad job, what you're doing. And acting
#
is also a confidence play, right? Very often when you are in an environment when you don't
#
have the confidence and maybe the director or the co-actors don't look at you a certain
#
way, it's sometimes harder to perform well as well. And, and so self-doubt is a huge
#
part of the process. You could come home on a day and think I'm a shit actor. I don't
#
know why I'm even doing this. And then of course, there's the career problems, which
#
is that, you know, if I look back, I think there are a number of times when I have felt
#
why am I doing this? I should just, you know, quit and do something else. And in my case,
#
it was probably exacerbated by the fact that I had these other interests. So I was constantly
#
dabbling in other things. And, you know, you'd always fool yourself. You know, I'm actually
#
doing this part time. I'm doing that. I could do this. I could do this. But yes, I think
#
it's, it's the hardest thing. If when people who want to be actors ask, you know, they're
#
very excited now because it seems like an exciting time. I think this is the hardest
#
part is, you know, dealing with your own demons and fighting that self-doubt because that
#
happens all the time. We are right now in a golden era, but I'm, I just feel that this
#
can also change, right? This is also a gold rush for Indian web series and OTD platforms.
#
There are so many of them that can also change in time. You never know what may happen. While
#
this going is good, let's go for it. But it's wholly possible that, you know, sometime in
#
the future, one, once again, you know, doubts what one is doing and wonders if this is,
#
you know, what we should continue doing. And it's probably too late for you to go back
#
into banking. So there you go. Though I should tell our listeners that just last year Mukul
#
and I as part of a team called Haryana Hawks won poker's version of the IPL. So maybe there
#
is a hope for us yet affecting and podcasting both kind of go out of fashion. Rasika is
#
laughing, but I don't think she's internally pleased that the thought of Mukul becoming
#
a more regular poker player. I was very excited about that idea. I was more interested about
#
how can you stay up all night? How can you play? How do you concentrate? And I was very
#
impressed that he used to read books on it. So I was fully encouraging it. And the certificate,
#
right? Like, yo, yes, I was very pleased. Like a good middle class person. I was extremely
#
pleased when he would come back home with a certificate which said that he'd won something.
#
I was like, nothing else matters. This certificate is the best thing. I framed it also and put
#
it up very embarrassingly. I remember the first tournament I think I won or I placed
#
in and I came back and I wanted to tell Rasika that, you know, I won some money and she was
#
not concerned about that at all. She's like, but you got a certificate. She was very excited
#
about that aspect. Yeah, you know, I still have my trophies up on the top of my shelf
#
out there. No, Rasika, I don't think then Mukul plays enough because there is a term
#
that people use called poker widows. And poker widows are people who have lost their husbands
#
to poker, basically. In the sense, they haven't died. They're not literally widows because
#
they've lost their husbands to poker there. So that thankfully does not seem to have been
#
the case here. You know, following up from, you know, what Mukul was sort of talking about,
#
Rasika, you once mentioned that, you know, when you got into acting, you wanted to do
#
good work for its own sake. You were just passionate about the work. And in the beginning,
#
you didn't really care about recognition. But then when Kisa came out, you were like,
#
shit, it's such a good film and I want more people to watch it. And then you do actually
#
feel bad that it's not getting the kind of reach it is and enough people aren't watching
#
it and so on and so forth. How does that sort of conflict work out? Because on the one hand,
#
we do this because we love it. You guys act because you love acting. You're in love with
#
the craft. You're in love with that whole journey. But at the same time, we are human
#
beings and we crave validation. And sometimes these two don't go together where, you know,
#
the kind of mainstream work which might have a greater probability to speak in poker terms
#
of getting us validation is not the kind of work we want to do or which excites us. So
#
how does sort of one deal with this internal conflict? Is this an issue that you faced?
#
It was not actually, you know, the validation was not so much in terms of numbers. I didn't
#
have so many people writing to me early on in my career saying that, oh, we really like
#
your work or anything like that because they hadn't seen it or the roles were too small.
#
So in terms of numbers, yeah, the validation was not so much. But I was lucky to have got
#
a lot of validation for my acting work from the film fraternity since Kshay, which was
#
like the small indie film that I had done. And actually, there were a lot of people who
#
were very encouraging at the time that I was doing very small parts in films as well. You
#
know, so I was always if I had done a two scene role, for example, in No Smoking, and
#
there were so many people who I got to meet there, who were working with Anurag at that
#
time. And then those people would constantly recommend me to other work. So that kind of
#
validation was always there. And that sort of kept me going. I had not even imagined
#
the idea of having a fan following or people recognizing me. You know, those were not things
#
that were part of my work culture or not things that people around me spoke about very often.
#
The conversations around me were more about, you know, what is the kind of work that you're
#
doing? What is the length of the role? Who are you working with in terms of, you know,
#
the style of the director and not the bigness of the production house? You know, so I think
#
those were the things that were happening around me. So I didn't really imagine a scenario
#
where I would have validation, have Janta validation, you know, that is not something
#
that I had imagined. So therefore, whatever came was a bonus. And so I was always drilled
#
by that rather than feeling bad about how it could have been. But the only point that
#
you're right, I felt a little let down was the time that Kissa had released and that's
#
because Kissa had only two screens in Bombay. It released in two cinema halls in Bombay,
#
you know. So that was shattering because it was released so poorly, right? And once, yeah,
#
something has got attention, then it becomes difficult if something else that you do doesn't
#
get the same kind of attention. But all that has been so recent in my life that I think
#
I still haven't gotten over celebrating that and I'm still not in the phase. But yeah,
#
like the kind of validation that the kind of fan following, I won't even say validation,
#
the kind of fan following that Mirzapur had. If another show doesn't get that, I'm like,
#
oh my God, is it not as popular as Mirzapur? Because once I tasted that, I do feel like
#
it would be nice to maintain it. But it was not something in the years that I was looking
#
for work or not getting enough work. It was not something that I preoccupied me at all.
#
Because it was not the kind of conversations that people around me were also having. It
#
was a very, and I think a lot of actors who I acted with in theater at that time, who
#
are now celebrities, so to say, in the OTT space, all of us joke about it once in a while.
#
You know, we're like, okay, leave this theater mentality, you've become a star. That kind
#
of thing. Because none of us used to think like that or talk like that.
#
And you know, earlier you pointed out, you know, how if something is successful, there's
#
so much money riding in the entertainment industry that that almost becomes a formula
#
and people want to keep repeating that. And it strikes me that even in the context of
#
acting, when a good actor gets into the skin of a character and plays it so well that it
#
seems that, you know, that is who they are. You know, is there then a danger of getting
#
typecast and getting the same kind of sort of roles offered to you? And obviously, Rasika,
#
you've played sort of a variety of roles by now in very different kind of projects. So
#
people know that's not the case. But in the early part of your arc, is that a worry? And
#
also, you know, in a recent interview, Manav Kolk kind of pointed out about how the term
#
actor sort of has a secondary status to the term star, you know, that we are still in
#
an industry which worship stars, and actors are almost like second class citizens that
#
own say character role and whatever is there. And I'm assuming that must have changed massively
#
over the last few years. But you know, what's your experience of that being like?
#
I think typecast is something that happens all the time. And you know, I find it's not
#
just casting directors who do it, but I noticed that it happens with even friends of ours.
#
And that's when you realize that this is true. People think of you as something because they
#
see you do that. I remember, you know, there was a time I was doing a lot of ads, and Rasika
#
was doing film, and she would get no ads and she would wonder why and I would get no films.
#
And it's the same casting directors would call us, but they would when they had an ad
#
role, they would call me and when they were done, you know, and they wouldn't think of
#
it the other way, because it's just that yeah, add to that. I think I Yeah, for me, I always
#
found that, you know, I got slotted into which did wonders for me in terms of being a whole
#
bunch of ads. But in terms of this corporate guy, right? I mean, like, if you want to dress
#
up, call Mukul Chatta. You know, it was like, I'm almost negative towards it. When I get
#
a call, and I hear that the guy works in a corporate office, my antenna go up, I immediately
#
think this must be some ridiculous role that they're calling me for, because if he wants
#
to wear a suit, you know, they're calling my number up. And sometimes the role could
#
be interesting, but I'm just sort of, you know, very to begin with. And yeah, I think
#
it's an endeavor on my part to try and do as varied roles as possible because luckily,
#
we're in a time where that's possible that there's this, you know, there's so much more
#
demand now that hopefully you can try and experiment a little bit and try and push yourself.
#
And I'm trying to do that. Now there's some projects I'm working on, which are, you know,
#
trying to break away and do something totally different. And you find that I mean, you find
#
that with, you know, the casting directors, you keep telling them, you know, like, for
#
example, I did a show last year, you know, a small part in Balaji show and the casting
#
guy who cast me for office said he was watching it. He said, I was wondering how you're doing
#
it because I couldn't think of you as anybody but Jagdeep Chanda. And you feel bad because
#
you feel like, you know, if the casting person is saying this, that, you know, they only
#
see you as that character. It's going to be a lot more effort to break out of it. Right.
#
And you and you really want to. That's that's really a huge endeavor.
#
Yeah. And I also found the role of Jagdeep Chanda really interesting because you know,
#
obviously, the brief of the role is this over the top, ebullient, enthusiastic kind of guy.
#
And you played it so well, that is very easy for me to see why people would, you know,
#
imagine that in real life, maybe this is the guy. So are you going to do more writing now
#
because Banana Bread, which I'll of course recommend to all my listeners and links from
#
the show notes, was such a wonderful little miniature with the two of you, you know, one
#
of the best users of the lockdown that I've seen among people that I know. Are you going
#
to do more writing and, you know, even directing at some point, maybe?
#
Writing, yes. I mean, I think Banana Bread has been a shot in the arm in that sense.
#
I mean, it's given a lot of confidence and I'm actually we're actually working on something.
#
I don't want to say too much to jinx it, but we're trying to work on another project to
#
write something. So, you know, like I said earlier, I've always wanted to do more writing.
#
The only scope I got of it was some storytelling that I did, live storytelling, you know, so
#
you have to craft your own piece and perform it, which I've done for four or five stories.
#
But now, yeah, I think I'm feeling a little encouraged because of Banana Bread and it's
#
a bit of a push. So I do want to push on that front for sure. Direction, I don't know, it
#
may be, you know, maybe later in the future, who knows, but right now it's not a plan.
#
Writing definitely, hopefully.
#
And so I've taken up a lot of your time. I'll just ask a couple of more questions through
#
both of you, one more general and one sort of about your personal journeys. And the general
#
one is that, you know, in a sense, we have lived through a very transformative period
#
in Indian cinema and Indian entertainment the last 20, 30 years, just in terms of the
#
way the world has opened up, the role that technology has played, all of that. It's so
#
exciting and as the formats are changing, you also find that storytelling is evolving,
#
the art is going to different places. What are in general, when you look at this journey
#
and when you see how it's going, I mean, you know, where do you kind of see this progression
#
going? Like, is there a trap that eventually, you know, more formulas will come out of it
#
and what is now a loosely forming ecosystem will get ossified in its ways. And again,
#
you'll have these big players and these mass of strugglers or, you know, what is your sort
#
of view of all of this? Because you've actually been participants in this whole process over
#
I'm not sure. I hope it remains as it is today, because I think the big problem that I was
#
facing before the OTT space boomed was the problem of distribution and distribution remained
#
the bottleneck for a very long time, especially in the kind of films that I was working in,
#
like the example of Kisa, releasing only into theatres. So I think technology had moved
#
at that time, such that producing a film had become much cheaper, because things had moved
#
from film, film to cameras were digital. So the cost of production had fallen significantly.
#
Also, a lot of one crore films had had reasonable success at that time. Films like Veja Frye
#
had started a kind of trend. So when I joined, when I started acting, when I moved to Bombay,
#
there was a whole period which initially was encouraging that a lot of production houses
#
were producing smaller films, a lot of smaller production houses were springing up, but distribution
#
remained a bottleneck for a very long time. And I think it took a year or two for everybody
#
to realize that we are producing all this great content, but we're not being able to
#
find ways to distribute it. And then the OTT space happened. And I think that it has, for
#
the last three, four years, been still democratic, still not releasing numbers, still encouraging
#
newness, because I feel like a lot of actors became, quote unquote, successful in the early
#
phase of the OTT space. But now still there are different actors who are coming in every
#
day, actors, directors, writers with new shows, which are becoming successful. So it's not
#
like there's no room for newness. And there seems to be still room for newness, which
#
I think is healthy. So I hope that that lasts. I'm not sure. But, you know, recently some
#
platforms have started releasing numbers in some ways, and I'm very, very wary of that.
#
So I hope that that doesn't happen. Yeah, I think, you know, in a lot of ways, we're
#
really lucky. I mean, for all that, you know, you mentioned earlier that, you know, going
#
through periods of self-doubt and all that, you suddenly find yourself in that zone where
#
there's a gold rush right now. And it's wonderful to be a part of the generation that's in the
#
gold rush, because it's really a benefit to you. And even if this were to die down at
#
some point in time, or the boom sort of reduces in size to some extent, hopefully you've done
#
some work that, you know, people recognize you and you've got that opportunity to do
#
it, which doesn't happen. I like what Rasika says. I mean, the distribution was this big
#
bottleneck earlier. You know, like another film I did, Gurgaon, I remember it got such
#
few screens in the theaters that my parents who wanted to see it, and they're a very biased
#
audience, right, they want to go and see it, and they couldn't because, you know, they
#
weren't screens near the house at convenient times. It was, you know, it was just that
#
tells you what kind of problems there were, right? You could make a film, but you couldn't
#
distribute it. Now that distribution, sort of those gateways have opened because you
#
don't not just have the OTT, but you have many OTT platforms. And I think you have them
#
because everybody's sort of trying to grab market share and go for it. There may come
#
a time, and this is my fear, because I'm always the pessimist who thinks about what the problems
#
down the road are. But my fear is that if you again get to a point where there are only
#
two or three OTT platforms and you have a different oligopoly now, you have, you know,
#
a cartel that was your cinema theater distribution chains now goes to only two OTT platforms,
#
you can have the same problem where they will just sort of command, you know, what work
#
they want seen and, you know, the terms of trade just change completely towards them.
#
So that's the fear that I have that that may happen. I hope that doesn't happen. I hope
#
you do have, you know, the more even playing field where you had many, many more platforms
#
because that allows for then, you know, proper competition. And that's good. The thing I'm
#
hopeful of is that, you know, because data has become so cheap in India, that's a big
#
part of what is happening. I mean, you know, we always wondered, you know, why people watch
#
what is coming on general entertainment, television shows, and we thought it will never change.
#
And now suddenly, you know, it's changing very fast. And I think it's also because people
#
have access to a lot more shows, there's a lot more they can see, and then they will
#
make that switch. So with data becoming cheap, and people are watching things across the
#
world. I think that's great for all of us, because I find that true for me, I think I
#
think the quality of what, you know, even what actors are doing, what writers are doing,
#
that they're, you know, they're raising the bar constantly. And you feel that pressure,
#
and that's a good pressure, that you just can't do what you were doing earlier, you
#
know, people are people are pushing themselves to do better and better work. And I hope that
#
that sort of global influence continues. Because, you know, of technology enabling us to see
#
a lot from everywhere. And, yeah. Yeah, I mean, just thinking aloud, it also strikes
#
me that, you know, the bottleneck has now shifted from distribution to our individual
#
attentional capacity. And therefore, what becomes important is what are the filters?
#
How are you discovering content? And if those filters are these mainstream filters, like
#
you said, maybe if they all consolidate into two, three OTT platforms, then competition
#
goes down and you're not sort of serving the long tail quite so well, though your parents
#
will still be able to log on to Netflix and see your shows, I hope. Yeah. And so I'm actually
#
going to cheat. I said this, I had led you to believe I'll have one question after this,
#
but I thought of another one. So anyway, so I'll throw in this extra one, which is that
#
if there are aspiring young actors, or even people who want to get into entertainment
#
as directors or writers, whatever, but especially actors, because, you know, that's what you
#
guys have excelled at, what advice would you give them not in terms of, you know, the kind
#
of work they should do or whatever, because that's really in no one's control. But how
#
should they approach all of this? How should they look at it? Like, what advice would you
#
give you guys give to a younger Mukul and Rasika from 12 years ago, if you could, you
#
know, send them a letter through a time machine? You know, anybody who tells me they want to
#
become an actor, I say, please don't. It's a long process. And God knows what might happen,
#
you know, there's no surety of where your career will go. And there's no one way of
#
getting it right. And it's such a matter of chance that and things have to just align
#
in a certain way at a certain time. And you might be the most talented, most hardworking,
#
go to networking, all of that, and you still might not be able to get the projects that
#
get you more work or have a career which is long and fulfilling, you know, so it's, it's
#
so full of uncertainties that I feel very nervous every time anybody tells me that they
#
want to become an actor. And I think if I thought things through, I wouldn't have it
#
would have been too scary. You know, but I just didn't think things through. I was just
#
too enthusiastic about everything that was coming by me.
#
No, that's really insightful. And it's, it's an illustration of the survivorship bias,
#
which is that you look at people at the top of a field and you imagine that, oh, I'm going
#
to be that person, but your probability of actually getting there may be so ridiculously
#
low that is better not to do it at all, which is why I think that, you know, that cliched
#
advice with self-help authors will sometimes give people a follow your dreams. It can actually
#
be very dangerous advice because so many people who follow their dreams just completely fall
#
apart and maybe it's better just to do your degrees and get all that into place and that
#
kind of middle class mentality. I can't, you know, if the 20 year old me heard me saying
#
this today, he would be so horrified and shocked. Mukul, you have anything to sort of add to?
#
Yeah, I just want to say like, like Rassika said, I think I didn't think it through entirely.
#
Otherwise I might not have been here. If I had been my pessimistic self and said, what
#
are the chances I have for any form of success? I would have very quickly said that, look,
#
this is not working. You have to do something else. So I kind of have almost contradictory
#
advice to a younger version of myself because on the one hand acting is such a success and
#
it is so difficult that you have to play the long game. You have to just keep hanging in
#
there so that you know, something it may just take its time. You never know when you get
#
a break or when something happens that allows you to get that validation and allows you
#
to get more work and carry on. You can't obviously bet on some OTD revolution coming some years
#
down the line. So I think to some extent I might have survived also because I kind of
#
did other things. On the other hand, my advice to myself is don't get distracted by doing
#
other things. You know, I have some sense of focus because I do feel that I did waste
#
a lot of time for a number of years because I was sort of dabbling in multiple things
#
and not focused on one thing. So I don't know. It's a mix of the two that, you know, play
#
the long game, but at the same time have focused. But to your point that, you know, don't, I'm
#
always someone to advise people to take more risks in life, you know, always take more
#
risks because I think it's the payoffs are much greater. The risk is higher, but the payoffs
#
are so much greater. If it doesn't work, then you have to, of course, the tough part is
#
to have the ability to walk away at some point and then, you know, try something else. But
#
I think we don't take enough risk in life. And this could be a long philosophical discussion,
#
which is kind of pointless, but I mean, it's been a fun journey. I don't have any regrets
#
about it despite the many ups and downs. And even if it turns out that, you know, four
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years later, I have to say that, you know, this is it and I have to do something else
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or I choose to do something else. It's been a fun journey. No, in fact, you know, this
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adds a new dimension to something that I often say where I'll often tell people that self
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delusion is a prerequisite to success. And the sense that I mean it in is that when you
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begin doing something, you're pretty bad at it by definition because you have begun. And
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if you were to actually recognize how bad you are at it, you would not do it at all.
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You would be so disheartened. But because you think you're good and you want to keep
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doing it, you just keep doing it, doing it, doing it and endless iterations and the 10,000
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hours and so on eventually make you good at it. So you have to be self delusional at the
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start. But the layer that you guys added to it is that the probability of success is so
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incredibly low that if we were clear sighted about that at the start, we might decide not
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to take the risk no matter how great the payoff is. But we overestimate our abilities and
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our chances and therefore we kind of go down that road. My final question to you is and
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you guys have been so patient. This is almost this is actually longer than some films that
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you guys will make. So thank you so much for doing this. Long form. So my final question
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to you guys is that in these incredibly exciting times and just as a consumer, I am excited
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and I'm so excited for you guys as well because of the kind of work that's coming out. Where
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do you see yourself five years from now? What are Mukul and Rasika doing five years from
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now or even 10 years from now, whatever you kind of prefer? Who are you five years from
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now? What is the kind of work that you're doing in the sort of universe you're engrossed
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in the kind of roles that are playing? Give me a sense of how you would like it to go.
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Let's not end on possible notes of despair. I would like to be a part of, you know, like
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be involved in ideating a project because that's something as an actor, I feel that
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I have very little agency. When I arrived to do my work, it's been written, which is
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half done. It's being visualized by somebody else. I don't want to be that somebody else
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visualizing it. It's too much responsibility to be a director. I feel you have to be God
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to be a director. You have to know everything and be a good manager and know exactly what
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works with somebody and what doesn't work with somebody else. I don't know how people
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sign up for a job like that. It's very, very difficult. So I don't want to be that. But
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yeah, I'd like to put a project together and be involved in it from the initiation of it.
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Things that I'm interested in telling and being a part of as an actor. Also, really,
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I'm very interested in doing some international work. So if I can sort of expand to that,
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I would feel very happy because I feel that I've been taken in by many actors and shows
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and films that I've seen in Hollywood. And that's been interesting to me. And I wonder
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how it would be to work in another culture as an actor. That there would be an added
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layer of vulnerability there. So I think that would be interesting.
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I think where I stand right now, I would like to do as much varied work as possible, play
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as many varied characters as possible. And I think that maybe comes from the earlier
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statement of having felt this pressure of being typecast. But I really would want to
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do as many things. You talked about self-delusion. I think actors are particularly delusional
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about themselves because we believe that we can play any part out there. I mean, somebody's
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grandmother's role, I'll play that. No problem. I believe I can do it. And I think at some
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level, if you don't have that delusion, you're not going to be able to carry on on this journey.
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You have to believe that I can do this as well as the greatest person who's playing
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this part. So I would like to do as many interesting roles, as many conflicted roles as possible,
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conflicted characters as possible. And I also would like to write more and hopefully put
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something out there. Because I do think actually the hardest part and the least appreciated
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part of any project is the writing. And I think we in India haven't given as much due
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to writers. Hopefully that will change. But that's also I think the most critical success
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factor for a project to me is how good the writing is. You know, you can get by with
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everything else not being as great. But the writing is what carries something through.
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And I'm also drawn to it. So hopefully that also happens.
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I'm so full of hope now. I mean, best of luck for all the projects that you not only act
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in, but also conceptualize and write and all of that. Thank you so much for your time and
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your insights and coming on the show. Thank you so much. Thank you.
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If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please check out the show notes where much
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of Rasika and Mukul's work is linked. Take your time and savor it. Some of it is magical.
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You can follow Rasika on Twitter at Rasika Dugal, R-A-S-I-K-A-D-U-G-A-L. You can follow
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Mukul at Mukul Chaddha, M-U-K-U-L-C-H-A-D-D-A. You can follow me at Amit Verma, A-M-I-T-B-A-R-M-A-C.
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All of us just use our names for our Twitter handle. Nothing fancy about it. You can browse
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past episodes of The Scene and the Unseen at www.sceneunseen.in. Thank you for listening.
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Did you enjoy this episode of The Scene and the Unseen? If so, would you like to support
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the production of this show? You can go over to www.sceneunseen.in slash support and contribute
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any amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking. Thank you.
