A year ago, Shabana Azmi had just returned from Budapest, Hungary, after shooting for Steven Spielberg’s futuristic sci-fi adventure television series Halo and was in quarantine. Today, she is busy wrapping up her portions in the European city and is expected to return to India in early April.

The 70-year-old actor has been shooting almost non-stop for the past few months for Nikkhil Advani’s web series, Moghuls, in India, Shekhar Kapur’s rom-com, What’s Love Got To Do With It, in London (UK) and Halo. Thoroughly enjoying the hectic work schedule, she reveals, it didn’t take a lot of convincing to return to the sets post the lockdown.

“I resumed work in Mumbai as early as September 2020 for Nikkhil’s web series and then followed it up with shoot in Budapest and London. We get tested five times a week. It is therapeutic to work and as long as one adheres to the safety protocols, it’s fine,” she says.

Azmi had tweeted that she was having a wonderful time working with Hollywood actor Emma Thompson. She adds, “Emma is lovely, funny and warm. We got along from the minute we met.” Azmi, who was in her Khandala home with her husband Javed Akhtar for over three months last year during the Coronavirus lockdown, says that it was lovely. “Both Javed and I were glad to discover that we enjoy each other’s company a lot! The crisis became an opportunity for us, which is not to say that the divide between the haves and the have-nots were not of concern to us,” she says.