In an exclusive chat with The Pioneer, actor Rajesh Sharma, who recently starred in Mrs Undercover, discusses signing the film, his camaraderie with Radhika Apte, and more.
SHIKHA DUGGAL
Rajesh Sharma is an exceptional actor with a career spanning so many decades. He has given the movie industry some of the best films and continues to push the envelope, at least for us, by providing path-breaking, or as we call it today, genre-breaking performances!
The actor graced The Pioneer with an interview about his recently released film, Mrs Undercover.
In this exclusive interview, he was asked a host of questions to do with his movie career and choices. So in the interaction, he answered, “The notion in society that women are still a discrete part made me sign Mrs Undercover. More than about me, the script was about a housewife played by Radhika Apte. We wanted to break the stereotype that a housewife is not just a housewife! Knowing that Radhika Apte, who is one of the seasoned actresses, is doing the role comforted me even more.”
Born in Ludhiana, he didn’t realise Kolkata was calling him, and he started doing so many Bengali films over there. So, very honestly, Rajesh Sharma was trying to view the story both tonally and as a very consistent one. Further in the interview, he says, “Give me any film or series; I am always in my comfort zone. I really don’t have to push the envelope now! The director was in fact a debutante, and I was wondering whether she’d be able to pull it off or not, but she seemed to be very experienced. She knew everything happening on the set, including the camera angles. I was actually undermining her!”
It’s an OTT release; for you, pause may be an option. But not for the actor Rajesh, because he is not used to doing comedy roles. More so because, “In my real life, I am a very serious man. And I always prefer doing serious subjects for Indian cinema! Even when I am doing a play, I like to be socially driven. I still don’t understand, after so many years, why my fans really like me in a comic book role. I was feeling very sad for the director because it’s her first film and she has to do so much hard work just for an OTT release. But her hard work has come out with flying colours because a lot of women are approaching me and are actually very curious about the movie. One of the clips from our movies has also gone viral! Post-release, I was thinking that it would have been really great if it was released in theatres.”
Even though he is a married man, he pulled us into more curiosity to know what his thoughts are about a housewife personally or what the role of his wife is in his beautiful life! He explained, “You just cannot call my wife a housewife — she is the boss of her house (he laughed out loud). We always tease each other that you are my employer and I am your employee! For anything that I have to do inside the house, I have to get permission from my wife. And then she applies reverse psychology to me. If she has to do something, she just informs me, but she doesn’t find it important enough to get permission from me. Women are ruling these days! It’s written so well in the film that every woman has a spy inside her. If I come a little late for dinner, she starts to interrogate me like any other wife. So there’s no difference between a normal wife and a star wife (he laughs again).”
An alumnus of the National School of Drama, he made his debut in the famous film of the 1990s titled Maachis! As we all can recall, it was a period political thriller written by Gulzar Sahab. Even during those times, it was trending because it was all about the Sikh insurgency. And the title conveyed so much of a metaphor because Gulzar Sahab thought that the youth of our country is like a matchstick, which can be used to light a dynamite. So Rajesh Sharma is really a well-versed actor.
He continued, “It was my very first film with Radhika Apte. But from what I observed, she shoots fantastically! Even if you watch her interviews, they’re really different from those of mainstream actresses. We never used to speak so much on the sets, but even then, we built some kind of chemistry around us as colleagues. There was an unspoken friendship, for sure. Now this has become a routine in the industry that the biggest star gets its name in the headline, and I don’t mind it. I don’t mind Mrs Undercover being called a Radhika starrer, I was given a particular role and I finished my job, and that’s about it. Headlines don’t affect me at all. What’s more important to me is the director; at least he or she thought of me as an important cast member. Now it’s on my own that I’ll be creating the impact across the country, and I always do.”
We did a little research on the reviews, and all the reviews have to say one thing: Rajesh Sharma was the one who gave a very noteworthy act, and that’s what makes him really happy. In 2005, if you remember, Rajesh Sharma actually made his comeback with the Vidya Balan-starrer Parineeta, and again, it went on to be a massive blockbuster hit. Why? Because it was a Hindi musical language romantic drama directed by the mind-blowing director Pradeep Sarkar. The film had notable allusions to Indian literature, and that’s what made it cult cinema for us. Rajesh Sharma still feels glad to be a part of Parineeta.
And he says some more: “I want to be a part of the movie that gives a dream-like surrealism. I want to experiment with films across a myriad of genres. I want to challenge the conventional and old techniques of filmmaking. Sometimes when we do films, the certification process becomes very tricky for us, but now that the liberty has come, it puts nuanced narrative ahead, and that’s what I like about doing films nowadays.”
After such a long conversation, we can certainly say that we were talking to a film enthusiast, and his opinions and selections are really influential on the stage.
His films are diverse, the target audience that he sets bifurcates the cinema that he chooses, and he is now an easily popular actor in our industry. Representing different classes, social practises, or cultures, to be precise, Rajesh Sharma is one of the most prevalent actors of today! Actually, any day.
