The uber-talented Shahana Goswami is one of those actors who has always impressed the audience and her fans with her work. The adept actress gets candid with The Pioneer’s Tejal Sinha in a fun chat about working in Neeyat, playing
different characters, and more.
different characters, and more.
Surprise: Good actors will surprise you by performing an emotion that feels simultaneously new and real. Well, actress Shahana Goswami is one of the most phenomenal and skillful actors we’ve got in this industry. Not us saying it, but her 17-year career in the industry with Rock On, Break ke Baad, Midnight’s Children, Heroine, Gali Guleiyan, and most recently Zwigato and now Neeyat.
While it might take years for one to work with some of the renowned actors of the industry, Shahana began her journey by coming to Mumbai and working with people like Ratna Pathak Shah, Konkona Sen, Paresh Rawal, and Naseeruddin Shah.
“It has almost been two decades, but it feels like it was yesterday,” begins the actress, continuing, “It has been a journey with amazing artists, human beings, and people that I look up to, love, respect, admire, and have always wanted to work with. Being able to make films with them, create characters with them, and have a journey with those characters through a vast sense of self-doubt and lack of self-belief because I’m not trained I always feel like I’m not good enough to feel that sense of reassurance in myself through others, through myself.”
She then decided to move to Paris for four and a half years. Before that, she did a whole bunch of smaller independent and international films, which gave her a new lease on life in terms of being able to play a more varied kind of material and also bigger parts to play, like the main leads, to travel to festivals, to meet interesting new people, and to meet other directors. Basically, another world of cinema in that sense!
Going a little fast forward, she’s worked in not one or two but four back-to-back shows and now also films like Neeyat.
Talking about actors, you either have the ones who’d work on like 10 films a year or the ones who’d work on the project that keeps them in the spotlight for a long time. Shahana has been in the category of actors who are not in a hurry to choose a project. However, in the last three to four years, her momentum has picked up. The Hush Hush actress agrees too, but she says, “There were other phases in my life also that were as hectic in this sense, like when there were back-to-back projects that I was doing, but not to the extent that it has been in the last 4-5 years.
I am picky because I can’t deny the fact that I have always been blessed, even in the moments of aridness in my work where I haven’t ended up doing something, and maybe I felt saddened by the lack of opportunity. But it was never like things hadn’t come my way or no work was offered. When you are carving the path of shifting course, you have to go back to the old variety of things that keep coming in and let smaller parts in bigger films in order to pave the way for what you really want to do and make space for it. I have said no, and those nos have helped create the space for the yeses I wanted to say and have allowed them to come my way because I do love what I do; I don’t want to be Jaded.”
In her most recent work, Neeyat has this big, eclectic cast. And Shahana has always loved doing ensembles, since the beginning of her career, as she continues: “I love the energy of an ensemble film because an ensemble film is character-driven. It’s based on every person’s performance, their storyline, and doing well for the other person’s character to work, and it’s amazing, and once again, it was an incredible bunch of people.
There’s always a slight nervousness I get with that many actors because I think there will be politics or ego hassles, or maybe we won’t get along with each other. But this time it was a bunch of people that got along seamlessly, and we still have that warmth and love for each other that is genuine. In working, everybody is such a thorough professional, and at times when we were running late or racing against time, there was still no compromise on creativity; people were really on top of their game with their performance, and that kind of generated a sense of aww for everybody. You would see the other person doing so well that it would push you to do even better, and it was a blast.”
Shahana has carved a reputation for herself by bringing her characters to life with subtle yet powerful nuances that leave a lasting impact on the audience. With playing the character of Lisa in Neeyat, she says, “I think what drew me to Lisa was the way that nobody would ever think of me playing Lisa, playing this kind of a woman who looks like this, who’s a bit seemingly ditzy, seemingly a gold digger, but who clearly has an emotional aspect to her as well. But just the external factors of her or the kind of surface-level description of her would make nobody think of me playing Lisa. And for me, that was what was exciting about playing Lisa; that’s why I chose to play Lisa.”
More than looks, it’s always said that one should be a good actor who can get into the skin of a character. The audience will love watching an actor’s good performance, where the actors get to play different and more realistic characters. Shahana’s character in Neeyat didn’t really have any specific preparations. However, after the discussions with Anu Menon, she was very clear that she wanted her (Lisa) to kind of look like Sophia Vergara from Modern Family with long hair. She wanted her to have bright lipstick. The one look in the entire movie had to really stand out.
While we see her playing roles that ‘challenge conventional narratives’ to represent real women. She believes that it’s not she who actively chooses such roles, but the people who think of her in such roles. She explains, “They are roles that are intriguing, interesting, and different from the run-of-the-mill parts. So I suppose I do end up taking them. It’s not been a conscious decision in any way like that. I am very proud of the variety of characters that I’ve got to play with and the vast difference between them.”
From playing a young girl from a chawl in Worli, to playing a character in Firaaq who’s from a different milieu, to Honeymoon Travels, where she is with streaks in her hair and jazzing around on a bike, smoking cigarettes, Then she also played Pratima from Zwigato and Lisa from Neeyat. And for Shahana, they’re just a variety of parts and characters that end up becoming more fun than anything else.
On how she keeps things fun for herself, she shares, “I don’t think actors choose things consciously for just optics. It’s also just about what’s fun. You get bored playing the same kind of character; it’s just to keep things fun for yourself. I feel like now I would like to shift out completely. I would love to do a proper “Bollywood film”. I grew up watching Bollywood; I love it; I crave a good Bollywood masala film; and I would love to be a part of it. And I know I’m capable of doing it because I have it in my blood.
As a kid, I did all this dancing in front of the mirrors to Bollywood songs and had posters up of actors, obsessively watching films and dreaming about them. So, I’m very filmy. It’s just that nobody really knows that side of me. I’ve always had a sporty life. I’ve been an athlete and a sportsperson since I was a kid. I’ve been a classical dancer. These are all things that have not been explored by any of my characters so far. I would love to do comedy. I’ve been called a “Nautanki” all my life, so I wish to kind of change it around and kind of do something totally different as well.”
On the work front, she is going to play the main lead in a British-Indian co-production, Despatch, with Manoj Bajpayee, and then a short film with Reema Das.Shahana is excited to take on all these new things and pave the way to make sure that she makes space for all these amazing new things to come into my life now.
