Priyanka Dasgupta (BOMBAY TIMES; November 24, 2018)

Fresh from the success of AndhaDhun, Tabu was in Kolkata as the special guest at the 24th Kolkata International Film Festival’s closing ceremony. During her stay in the city, she talked to us about Gulzar saab’s influence on her career, her equation with Irrfan and her current priorities:

After AndhaDhun,there have been talks about your portrayal of strong women characters. How do you portray dark characters effortlessly?
For me, every character takes the same amount of immersion. I don’t have any special approach for playing dark characters. That’s because I never looked at them as dark characters per se. For me, they were real people.

Simi in AndhaDhun is the cheating wife of a has-been star who is at once a seductress, an aspiring actor, a step-mother and an accomplice in a crime. Despite being the primary antagonist who is deeply flawed, it is difficult to hate her. So it is for Nimmi in Maqbool,Ghazala Meer in Haider and Anne Mathew in Golmaal Again. Do you consciously create empathy for grey characters?
I don’t think of people as out-and-out black or white. I don’t see people as good or bad, though some deserve to be seen as purely dark (laughs). I think it is easier for me to diminish the evil in people and be able to see the good. I never thought that these characters should get empathy from the audience. They live their lives and do what comes to them, according to the script. If people have empathy or hatred, then that’s their perception. That’s what I am bringing out in them.

Do you ever revisit your own films?
Rarely. I don’t think I can be my own audience as long as the film is not complete. I come from a generation that had no monitors on the sets. You had to go with the director’s conviction and be happy with it. I still work like that. But yes, there are a few scenes that speak to me. In AndhaDhun, there are many such scenes. Like, when I first go to Ayushmann Khurrana’s house to see if he is wearing a mask. Then, there is the ‘tu toh bohot bundle aurat hai’ scene. I also love the car scene in the climax. What I like about Sriram (Raghavan) is that nothing of his craft is manufactured. He is never trying to be dark and morose. He never manipulates a response. That is why people liked his AndhaDhun and I enjoyed acting in it, too. I also revisit the chinar scene from Haider. There are some really nicely written scenes in Maqbool — especially the Meri Jaan scene with Irrfan.

Haider and Golmaal Again are from two completely different spaces. Have you asked directors why they cast you in films from such diametrically opposite genres?
It’s the faith of the directors. They haven’t stereotyped me in their heads. Rohit Shetty must have believed that I can carry off Golmaal Again even after Haider and Drishyam. Gulzar saab came to me with Maachis when Ruk Ruk Ruk was on TV. I had asked him how he visualised me in such a role but he never replied. Both Sajan Chale Sasural and Maachis had released the same year (1996). Maqbool came to me after I did Biwi No. 1 in 2000. That was also the time I did Astitva and Chandni Bar.

Maqbool is one of the rare instances in Indian cinema where the leading lady was so dark and conniving. Yet, there was love and romance. I wonder what Vishal (Bhardwaj) saw in me that he felt I would be able to bring that layer. In Haider, which I did in 2014, my character had so much of internal silence. Physically, too, she was so different from the cop I played in Drishyam the next year.

With Indian cinema celebrating women whose beauty lies in their vulnerability, how did your portrayal of conniving women gain acceptance?
Acceptance isn’t in my hands. Acting isn’t a mechanical or technical job and I can’t dissect the process. On a lighter note, perhaps from a Vishal to a Rohit, everyone is seeing a planner and a manipulator in me (laughs out loud).

Irrfan had once described you as someone ‘deeply spiritual, who straddles many ends’…
It’s only after I read this interview of his that I realised how deeply and aptly he understands me. He always says that there is a comedian in me that very few know about. I am looking forward to having him back and doing a comedy with him.

You’ve refused more offers than you have accepted. Didn’t that hurt egos in a male dominated industry?
(Laughs) I think most men see me as a fellow man and not a woman refusing them. I have never done this gender-segregation in the workplace. How does gender matter if a person is doing right or wrong? I have worked from a young age and lived like a man.