Seventeen years after she wielded a gun on the big screen in Godmother, actress Shabana Azmi is set to reprise the role on TV in Amma. She will take over from actress Raina Joshi who played the title role. The latter quit the show because she did n't look old enough for the part post the leap.

Incidentally, the makers had originally planned to make a film on the subject and had approached Shabana for the part. “The film didn't happen, but their TV show got passed,“ says the actress. Ask her about the similarities between her film Godmother and Amma, and she replies, “The only similarities are that they are both mafia dons and they get into this role after the death of their husbands. While Godmother was more politically inclined and motivated, Amma is more like a Robin Hood,“ says Shabana.
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Seventeen years after she starred as a mafia don, Shabana Azmi takes Urvashi Sharma’s place as bootlegger in TV show
Shaheen Parkar (MID-DAY; September 7, 2016)

In 1999, she played an underworld character in Vinay Shukla’s The Godmother for which she bagged a National Award for Best Actress. Now, 17 years later, the actress is yet again playing the role of a mafia queen, albeit on the small screen. The veteran actress has replaced Urvashi Sharma in Ek Maa Jo Laakhon Ke Liye Bani Amma.

The weekend TV series is loosely inspired from the life and times of Mumbai’s yesteryear female don, Jenabai Daruwali. A bootlegger, she was among the first few women in early ’70s to be associated with underworld names like Haji Mastan, Vardharajan Mudaliar, Karim Lala and Dawood Ibrahim, who addressed her as maasi.

In The Godmother, Azmi’s character was based on the life of Santokben Jadeja, mafia queen of Porbandar, Gujarat, in the late ’80s and early ’90s who later turned politician.

Azmi began shooting for the show yesterday at Filmistan Studios. She was in London over the weekend for the play, Kaifi Aur Main.

Says Azmi, “I returned from London on Monday night after doing packed shows of Kaifi Aur Main at the O2 Theatre. Completely jet-lagged, it was not easy getting into the character of a mafia don. The comparison with Godmother is inevitable, but the two characters are distinct. Vinay Shukla’s Rambiben in Godmother for which I bagged a National Award had a political trajectory whereas Zeenatbi in Amma is more of a Robin Hood character; some think of her as a hero, some as a villain. She is illiterate, but street-smart and cunning.”

Urvashi opted out of the show after a recent time leap in the track. Initially, she worked on her character’s look and resorted to make-up and prosthetics, but she felt she didn’t appear old enough. She then decided to bow out of the show.

Azmi adds, “The first day’s shoot was exhausting, but I thrive on pushing myself, so I am giving it my best shot. I can’t rest on laurels I earned in Godmother. Jeevan chalne ka naam hai. The makers have recreated Bombay of the ’70s well and I am happy with my look.”

The '70s show
Jenabai Daruwali started out as a broker of smuggled food grains in Daana Bazaar in Bombay of the early 1970s. Later, she turned to bootlegging and became an aide of gangster Mudaliar. She was also a police informer. Jenabai spent her last few years in a home in Chunawala building, Dongri, involving herself in a religious movement called Tabligh-I- Jamaat, and getting young Muslims into the fold, before a sudden stroke led to her death in 1993.