Soha Ali Khan and husband Kunal Kemmu welcomed their daughter Inaaya in 2017. Post that, she was focused on her personal life and raising her daughter, and was seen in a few projects like Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster 3 (2018) and in a couple of web shows last year. The actress and author says that now she’s ready to take up more acting assignments. In a conversation with us, Soha talks about her experience of working in a horror film and how she is glad that today there are more author-backed roles for actresses her age.

About her break and the kind of opportunities that are coming her way in this phase of her career, Soha says, “Today when I see good content that’s out there, I wish I could have been a part of some of it. Though there is great work, there’s a bit of a slowdown we are witnessing right now in the industry.”

Soha add, "Some corrections are happening. But overall, I am very excited by the fact that I am a woman in my 40s, who is being represented well on screen. I don’t feel any panic about the fact that there won’t be any work for me. There are a lot of roles for actresses my age and they are not clichéd ones, but meaty and author-backed roles.”

While she is longing to take up more acting projects, Soha is also focusing on her production venture with Kunal, which is a biopic on veteran lawyer Ram Jethmalani. She shares, “I want to do a lot more work. It’s just that I have been really enjoying being a parent. Now Inaaya is six and she is very independent. I enjoyed my work-life balance, but now I want to focus more on ‘work’ in the work-life balance process. My plate is full with acting and production work. We were lucky to get the life rights of Ram Jethmalani. It’s exciting to research and weave it into some kind of cinematic form as he had a very long and colourful life.”

Soha recently shot for a horror film with Nushrratt Bharuccha, which is a sequel to the 2021 release Chhorii. The actress says, “This year you will see me in a horror film. The director and the producer came to me saying that I would fit the part of the antagonist (as an evil character) perfectly. I was surprised I could look scary on screen. I wasn’t too sure about the opportunity. I asked Kunal (Kemmu, her husband) and he said he could totally see me as the scary element in the horror movie, and so did my daughter (laughs)!”

About her experience shooting for a horror film, Soha shares, “I haven’t played an antagonist before. This is the first time I even wore prosthetics. Horror as a genre is tough as it can go either way. With horror and comedy, you either love it or hate it as there is no middle way.”

Soha’s nephew Ibrahim Ali Khan is set to make his debut as an actor. Talking about him, she says, “Ibrahim is good-looking and has a charming personality. But I have not seen his work as an actor. I think that he has great potential, and it is now for the director to bring out the best in him and obviously for Ibrahim to work hard. When it comes to the acting bug, I have seen it more in Sara (Ali Khan, her niece) while they were growing up. I think things changed after Ibrahim assisted on film sets. In terms of looks, Ibrahim is definitely the taller version of bhai (Saif).”