With Saali Mohabbat that premières today, Radhika Apte returns with yet another unconventional story. That is what the actor has continuously sought with her projects — be it the all-women drama, Parched (2015), or the black comedy, Monica O My Darling (2022). “Creatively, we need to be more fearless. There’s this stupid notion floating around — yeh kaam nahin karega, woh karega — and it’s clearly not true. We need to stop fearing stories before we even tell them,” says the actor, in her signature candid style.
(From left) Tisca Chopra, Jyoti Deshpande, and Manish Malhotra with Radhika Apte. Pics/Instagram, Youtube
That’s not the only change she is hoping to see. Ask her about an immediate thing she’d change about the industry, and she says, “Work ethics. We need basics like punctuality, payments on time, lunch breaks, and proper shifts. Our business is so consuming that people barely have lives outside of it. That needs to shift.”
A still from Raat Akeli Hai 2
What doesn’t shift is Apte’s love for complex characters. In the Zee5 film, which also stars Divyenndu and marks the directorial debut of actor Tisca Chopra, Apte plays Smita, a homemaker who is the primary suspect in her husband’s murder. It isn’t lost on her that she is constantly drawn to morally ambiguous characters. “You cannot judge your characters. You have to love every single one you play, and for that, you need tremendous empathy. Acting has made me more empathetic. You start looking at people with compassion. When someone says, ‘I did this,’ you instinctively ask, ‘Why?’”
It helped that Chopra had the answers to all her questions. “Tisca was to originally play her, so she had a connection with Smita. I came in from the outside. So, I scrutinised the character more, and Tisca was always on Smita’s side,” she laughs.
Did you know?
Tisca Chopra, who turns feature film director with ‘Saali Mohabbat’, was to originally play the role essayed by Radhika Apte
