Female liberation on-screen, has almost always had a template: smoking, sex and abuses. And that’s something actor-director Konkona Sen Sharma doesn’t believe is appropriate representation.

“Women being shown smoking and drinking as ‘liberated’ has been going on for decades, it’s not just on OTT. Whether they are smoking and drinking, their sartorial choices and sexual activities are a very superficial marker of what is true liberation. It doesn’t really show whether a woman is emancipated or not,” says the 44-year-old who was last seen in the film Killer Soup.

Her character in the show had ambition to rise up in life and own a restaurant. The narrative focused on that, instead of the other markers of her freedom. Sharma’s other projects, be it Wake Up Sid (2009) or Ajeeb Daastaans (2021) never showed her characters partaking in the above activities either.

She continues, “It’s nice to show women having choices, but there’s a compunction to show women as very responsible, good and always behaving well; that’s also another problem. Killer Soup moved away from these things and got into the depth of my character’s liberating choices. What’s nice is you were not supposed to take it seriously, there was a strain of dark humour. My character had career aspirations. Unfortunately, not only can she not cook, she also gets embroiled in so much crime.”