Actress Shweta Tripathi Sharma has won all the right accolades with her latest web series Kaalkot. The charming actress gets candid with The Pioneer reveals her feelings while working on the project, and some exclusive deets on her upcoming franchise of Mirzapur.
SHIKHA DUGGAL
Shweta Tripathi Sharms- she’s fully deserving of our continuing gaze! Her latest web series Kaalkot makes us have a very special feeling for her: she’s exploring something so dark, a shift and experiment that we must welcome. A very detailed look at the conditioning of men in a system that reveres them as the strong gender, only to realise that the pit they are throwing their daughters into will turn poisonous someday and hit them back, literally and metaphorically.
A renewal and vitality of the theme turned her into an acid-attack survivor for the series. And the way she’s coloring the bars of aesthetic sensibilities with a dash of awareness was our moment to have a dialogue with her. And, as might be expected, Mirzapur 3 is on the block!
She begins the interview with a lot of elation, “After I had been through the prosthetic process — the approbation for actors like Amitabh Bachchan or Shabana Azmi increased. It’s not so effortless. Usually, what happens is we are supposed to focus on emotions and physicality. But when prosthetics are involved, it amplifies the user-watching experience. I was purported to come three hours earlier than everybody else. In fact, to even remove it used to take almost two hours. I can’t even begin to tell you how shoddily it used to itch, used to feel like I am on fire!”
Nevertheless, ‘Chota Muh Badi Baat’— the actress feels the trauma that the real survivors go through is an unavoidable miasma. So she has no complaints! She expressed some of her feelings, “I can still remove my make-up, real survivors can’t. I think I should avoid my discomfort, and I accept it. My climax was shot as the first scene, so I was feeling completely lost on the sets. I didn’t understand the shell-shocking situations of an acid attack survivor. I became restless. Before the attack you are somebody else, after the attack, you are somebody else. So, I was feeling strained. I didn’t want to portray any wrong sentiments toward the survivors, I was very cautious of that. On day one, I couldn’t help but tears started to roll down my eyes. The only role that took me through an emotional rollercoaster ride in so many years, I wasn’t okay. How can we do this to women? Is humanity so dead? (Shweta was angry and we took a pause).”
She continued, “It’s still affecting me. We are letting them down! Their whole families are destroyed. These are very sensitive themes, and we must do discussions on them. An acid attack should make us uncomfortable to the core! We are so judgmental in our lives. I want my fans to feel the pain, anyhow. So that they are uncomfortable and a conversation begins! We are so obsessed with external validations that we aren’t realising what’s happening around us—the real hostilities.”
Changing the course of our interview a little bit for her solace, we found out from the actress, that, “I only want to choose scripts that raise the bar of cinema. I want my fandom to be intellectual, to be aware of their surroundings. If my movies or web series can evoke feelings in them, I am good to go in this industry. Box-office collection is just a passing thought! For example, the way the director chose to explore male toxicity and show us how deep-rooted it is in our system that even the most honest of the people are somewhere a part of the clan is the kind of script I want my audiences to watch, and feel.”
She makes a revelation — “During the narration, I judged my character. But hello? Am I not liberal, outspoken, and an educated woman? But, I judged her and jumped to a conclusion already. Moving ahead in the narration, I started questioning myself on every new scene. So, the metaphors run deep in the story. My dad messaged me, it was heart-warming. He found me an accomplished actress! Just recently, my in-laws were watching the show and my sister-in-law comes up to me and asks me to only sign such kinds of roles. This is what I wanted all my life.”
So Mirzapur season 3 is going to be a promising adrenaline-fueled series. And, what’s Shweta upto in the enthralling world of Mirzapur this time? Well, she disclosed, “I love it when people call me “golu didi”—kids know me, they make me feel so important on the streets of any city in the country. Feels like they are backing me up! In the upcoming season, my character goes into a dark world. All I am supposed to feel about is revenge! This is one of my most special characters because I have never signed a third season for any series until now. So many years have passed since this franchise began, and it’s still the biggest show in the entertainment space. Audiences are going crazy for the next season! All the characters are so explosive, dude and so authentic. They are coming from that raw space which connects them to rural audiences also! Enough of these “doodh ke dhule hue characters,” because we moved away from it because our show became such a sensation. All the characters took sides in this show! Who do you like, is up to you.”
