The Heeramandi cast has certainly been the talk of the town ever since its announcement. What better can it be than gaining more insights on the selection from the casting director, Shruti Mahajan, herself in this exclusive chat with The Pioneer.Tejal Sinha
It’s been almost a month since its release, and Heeramandi has still been creating the same buzz and providing one and all with more insights about the period drama, helmed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Now, be it with some BTS insights, adoring Bibojaan’s Gajagamini walk, or Alamzeb being trolled, the series has been all over the news!
If truth be told, the casting, right from Manisha Koirala as ‘Mallikajaan’ to Taha Shah Badussha as ‘Nawab Tajdar Baloch’, Farida Jalal as ‘Qudisha Begum’ to Fardeen Khan as ‘Wali Bin Zayed-Al Mohammed’, has undeniably been a bonus point.
So why not gain more insights behind the casting from the casting director Shruti Mahajan, whose notable works in her repertoire include iconic titles like Bajirao Mastani, Gangubai Kathiawadi, The Big Bull, Lipstick Under My Burkha, Padman, Mary Kom, Satyagraha, Ghoomer, and Lust Stories 2, to name a few.
“The casting for Heeramandi was similar to that of the other projects I have cast for,” begins the casting director in this exclusive chat with The Pioneer. So basically, she got a script from the directing team almost more than a year before the project went on the floor. “For this series, I didn’t get a script; I got a Bible (she laughs). In the script, after reading the character presented by Sanjay Leela Bhansali and knowing that it was going to be streamed on OTT, expectations were very high. I knew the antagonist and protagonist had to be faces in the search for the right actor for the right role! Just like Heeramandi, the casting also had to be larger-than-life. We kept on doing multiple rounds of presentations, and after the main cast was done, we got into the secondary casting.”
A revelation she brings to us: “There were auditions happening for Alamzeb and Tajdar’s characters, and for the rest of the characters, it was just a look test.”
Speaking of Alamzeb’s character, the discussions around Sharmin Sehgal’s performance don’t seem to stop anytime soon. People have, in fact, also criticised Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s niece for having no expression! As we discuss the same thing with Shruti, she shares, “You cannot please everyone. Furthermore, given the nature of our work, we receive a wide range of feedback. One has to take everything with a pinch of salt and move on. You must continue to improve your craft and give it your all. It’s a packaged deal. We are aware of what we have accomplished and the effort we have expended, and we must be respected for it. Regarding criticism, I believe that we learn to accept it in the same way that we accept love. As a casting director, I always tell actors to focus on their skills. I feel that a lot of people have liked Sharmin’s work. There is a lot of praise for her voice and for her innocence, so I feel she’s done a fine job; she has given her best.”
She recalls that she has come a long way working with Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Her first project with him was Ramleela, and she says she’s got to learn a lot while working with him. “Now we share a beautiful working relationship. Yes, the expectations are very high with each film that I work on with him because he always thinks it’s going to get better and better. Every time that I cast for him, I know that it has to be out-of-the-box casting. It is not easy to please him,” she shares with sheer excitement and further speaks of casting veteran actors like Manisha Koirala and Farida Jalal. “He wants to push the envelope, and that is when, when it came to the casting of Mallikajaan, we thought of Manisha because the character had to be larger than life and had to belong to an era and to that part that was beautiful, had to be aesthetic, and we know Manisha is a great actor. We’ve always seen Manisha doing these pretty soft beauty roles, but Bhansali had worked with her in the past and was definitely aware of her skills, so when her name popped up, he was very excited. And I was like, this is something nobody has ever seen Manisha do. Back then, she was in Nepal, and when we called her, she was also very excited to be a part of it. And with Fareeda Ji, it just happened that the role required a graceful, classy grandmother, with a lot of love and affection, and then an age group, which was also supposed to be right. The first name that came as a reference was her! And during that, we heard rumours that she wasn’t keeping well. So we first had to check on her health.”
In the context of Heeramandi, she shares that the biggest challenge was the expectations from Netflix. “They knew that somebody like SLB was known for his casting and his craft. Casting for a series doubles the work. He wanted that the casting should feel like they belonged to the world of Lahore, Pakistan, and that it was also an era that was more real. The challenge for the character was to understand every part, and all these characters had their own tracks. The core was the same during casting but had their own uniqueness, and the guys had to give a royal vibe to men who could be dominated by these courtesans, and they could drive these men into the story.”
As we head towards the end of this chat with her, Shruti, who is going to work on a film with Akshay Kumar Sarfira, one series with Rajkumar Gupta, and Bhansali’s Love and War, to name a few, says, “The only best decision is to follow what I’ve liked. It’s a dream come true. Every film on which I have worked is special, as is working with such filmmakers. I only have gratitude if you follow your passion; the sky is the limit.”
