In her debut film Pataakha (2018), Radhika Madan played an acid-tongued woman fighting her own battles. Five years and four more movies later, the actor is glad that she has only essayed feisty women on screen — be it an ambitious teenager in Angrezi Medium (2020), or a daughter helping her mother run a drug ring in the upcoming Saas Bahu Aur Flamingo. “Every day when you go to the set and take down 10 guys, you feel a sense of power. I felt like I can rule the world,” she laughs, talking about Homi Adajania’s crime drama.

The web series, also starring Dimple Kapadia, subverts gender roles, showing women as gun-toting bosses taking on the men in the business. Madan says it reflects the independent streak of today’s women who do not need men to rescue them.

Stating that she has avoided damsel-in-distress roles, she adds, “Today, people won’t even like to watch a woman screaming, ‘Save me’. I find it boring to play such characters. We can save ourselves, we don’t need a man for that.”

What women want, she emphasizes, is an equal partnership with men. “Also, [we are showing] that empowerment doesn’t lie in the fact that these women are holding guns, but in their choice to live their life according to their will. We are not commenting on whether [their actions are] good or bad.”