Whether it was hockey player Bindia Naik in Chak De! India or Sarika in B.A. Pass , Shilpa Shukla played the smouldering, cold-hearted woman to the hilt, so much so that she repeatedly got offered the “angry young woman” role; “You know, the kind that suits a man,” shrugs Shilpa.
After bagging many awards for ‘Best actor in a negative role’ for Chak De!... it was a refreshing change then for Shilpa that Prakash Jha picked her for his production house’s latest comedy film Crazy Cukkad Family , directed by debutant Ritesh Menon. “The timing was great. After doing a tragedy like B.A.Pass, what better than a comedy? Nobody wants to be typecast. There are many sides to me. And doing too many intense roles is tiring. I wanted to come out of my comfort zone after Chak De!.. and B.A. Pass offered that opportunity; it was an out of the body experience for me,” says Shilpa.
B.A.Pass directed by debutant director Ajay Bahl, went on to win the best film Audience Choice Award at the South Asian Alternative Film Festival (SAAFF) in France, and the Best Film in Indian Competition at the 12th Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival, bringing her much critical acclaim.
Shilpa was in Bengaluru to promote Crazy Cukkad Family that releases on January 16. In the film she plays a socialite and wannabe Mrs. India, who grudges her brothers because she was married off at an early age. The story is of an estranged family coming together when the father slips into a coma. “All the characters in the film live a dual life. It’s so close to today’s reality where we lead a different life on Instagram or Twitter where we try to show how happy we are while reality is so different,” she observes. “Indian audience today want people like themselves on screen; not glamour dolls. That’s why Chak De!... worked. It was the story of the normal underdog.”
But her career didn’t really take off past her first big success. “It’s not like I’m very choosy, but not many roles come my way. It’s only first-time filmmakers who are giving me such chances to work, and I have great faith in them,” she says. It took her seven long years after Chak De!.. to land a meaty role, and Shilpa became disillusioned with the film industry. “When you’re not satisfied with the films you are doing you don’t feel like doing anything at all. I left Bombay in 2011, went back to Delhi, then returned to my village in Bihar to do some soul searching; I had suddenly lost my father. It was only after B.A. Pass brought me all these awards that I felt again cinema is my calling.” She says Gangs of Wasseypur was offered to her but she didn’t want to play angry young woman again. “The actor in me was looking for a character who finds redemption.”
But after B.A.Pass , she sighs that only sex-horror films came her way. “Every filmmaker wants a short cut to success. They figure that sex sells in the market and they have this myopic way of looking at things. Most of the time, people don’t work on their scripts. I don’t know if there are any good scriptwriters in Bollywood anymore,” complains Shilpa, who comes from a serious theatre background. She started her acting career with eminent theatre person M.K. Raina. Later she worked with director Arvind Gaur of the Asmita Theatre Group and has acted in plays such as Mahesh Dattani’s Final Solutions and Tara, Govind Deshpande’s Antim Diwas, Ashok Lal’s Ek Mamooli Aadmi, Girish Karnad’s Rakt Kalyan (Taledanda) and Neil Simon’s Log-Baag .
Lined up is Sujoy Ghosh’s film Durga Rani and a solo play she plans to travel the country with, beginning in February in Delhi — Dario Fo’s A Woman Alone .
