Actress Meera Chopra, who stars as the lead protagonist in the web series Safed, gets candid with The Pioneer about depicting the character of a widow, hardships, and more.
Purity, cleanliness, innocence—these are the many meanings of Safed, oh, and the colour white. However, do you know what? Safed is also a web movie starring Meera Chopra as the lead protagonist, seemingly to be a love story between a transgender woman and a widow based in Banaras. Meera will show you the state of social death with the symbolism of safed rang, faithfully.
During our exclusive conversation, it would hardly be an exaggeration if we said that watching grief in the city she was shooting meant nothing like a personal experience for the leading lady.
She expressed, “We are depicting a lifeless woman with the help of white colour, and that was the verbatim. I am playing the character of a widow, and I could see the issues going beyond emotional burden. In the climax, we are trying to bring colour to a movie whose title says “Safed”. Do you get the amalgamation?”
Also the cousin of Priyanka Chopra, the actress felt her current role took her so deep into the waters that somewhere down the lane, it may alter her life one day. “By playing such a character, it taught me how to fight for your life. Safed has been a very painful movie for me. It wasn’t an easy movie to shoot! The movie was taking a toll on my physical health with the kind of oppressive customs I was watching around me. In fact, the shoot duration was also so short that I saw my co-stars also getting affected at the same time. Closely, it was a traumatising shoot,” added Meera, who was exposed to some extents of vulnerability during the movie.
Unexpectedly, it was emotionally challenging for the actress too, because, to your surprise, she was shooting with the real widows around her. The social exclusion took a toll on her! The actress continues, “To see the agony of a 26-year-old widow was the most hurtful for me. They were immature and were suffering through the trauma of an event of loss in their lives already. Unimaginable! I spoke to each one of them, and they had lost the hope to live; that’s why they were lifeless. They are surviving in an ashram. And it’s not just in Banares; the case in point could also be Mathura. For a long period of time, I was lost in my thoughts in Banares whenever the camera wasn’t rolling.”
With the flow of the interview that was leading to—we had to ask Meera what kind of burden widowhood was grasping her, especially when she could see the reflection of the treatment of widows in real-time. She, with a tender heart, recalled, “All in all, it was a load on me to play the role of a widow. I have never interacted with young widows in my entire life! I was busy living an overtly luxurious life. In the first instance, I wasn’t able to act since I mentioned the treatment of widows. But my director was immovable.” Even if we speak of the preparation for a simplistic role like this, it had its intricacies. For example, “This movie was really different for me. Unlike others who had always stressed on a glamour quotient! I, as an actress, cared a damn about how I was going to be looking on screen with no makeup on me. I had a maximum of ten minutes, and I was ready to roll on set. My hair was undone because most of the time it was covered.”
She was waking up in Banaras for a hefty shoot like this. Banaras, that’s known for its tranquility and more. So, Meera Chopra had a unique experience of hers, which she shared with us: “The city has become my favourite after Safed. Coincidentally, right after Safed, I shot another movie in Banaras itself! I found it to be a chaotic city, unlike others. The peace everyone seems to talk about is actually felt in the middle of the mayhem when the Ganga aarti begins. The city in turn helped a lot to give character and credibility to the film.”
Sharing the camaraderie with her co-actor Abhay, who is playing the character of a transgender, she remarked, “Abhay was trying to change the way transgenders are perceived. He had to engross himself as a character—that’s just a piece of meat! Nobody bothers about this community. We shot at real places where transgender people live; it was terrorising for both of us. It was a dirty place; nobody should live like this.”
We hope that this film gives voice to the people who come from diverse backgrounds in society, struggling for space among the conformist audience!
