'I am not a mother and never had an abortion either, so I had to understand motherhood and child loss from anecdotal experiences of others.'
Mia Maelzer plays Jhumpa, the disempowered woman on the run in Karan Tejpal's well-reviewed film Stolen.
She plays a woman, who loses her five-month-old baby at a railway station.
"It wasn't as tough physically as it was emotionally for me to shoot Stolen," Mia tells Subhash K Jha.
Your performance as a tribal woman on the run in Stolen is quite something. How did someone as urban play such a role?
I come from a unique family, which is from urban and rural spaces.
My father comes from an erudite, reputed, Bengali family of people in sports, science, law, cinema and arts. My mother comes from a family in a tiny Himalayan village of Nepal.
I was brought up in an English medium school in a town called Panihati until I reached the University of Calcutta, almost unaware of our family history.
When did you become aware of the fact that you were from such a distinguished family?
Everyone was casual about teaching me the importance of their contribution to society; they ensured that I was given same education and responsibility.
So I slowly learnt everything without any pride attached to my craft.
I also ended up with a scholarship at the National School of Drama and once you become part of an institution like that, where most of your batchmates come from rural India, there is no way you stay super urban anymore.
When did you become interested in cinema?
I grew up watching great world cinema and took part in national sports camps as an athlete.
My mother ensured that I learnt Indian classical dance along with basic ballet.
Granny exposed me to folk theatre, music and dance.
My nanny Komoladi passed away last week. She was from Metiabruz.
Our house help Bhagwan was from Odisha.
One of my aunts was married into a family in a village, which owned huge mango and lychee orchards, where we would spend hours with the farmers.
My brother and I grew up with a lot of Anglo-Indian family influence at home.
So there was no particular struggle for me to understand the class spectrum that society offered.
What did you get from this multi-cultural upbringing?
What I discovered is that we are essentially human beings first. The rest are all just socially-constructed boxes.
So at a surface level, it is easy for me to play any role.
The complex part is to play through the situations where my characters make extraordinary choices.
Did the character require a lot of preparation?
Yes. My teacher Dilip Shankar sir prepared me lightly about this script, as did the team that visited me at home in Jaipur.
I knew about Gaurav Dhingra and held huge respect for him as the producer of Angry Indian Goddesses, but I discovered Director Karan Tejpal only after we met three years before we shot Stolen.
It was slightly before COVID so we had a lot of time to prepare.
How did Karan help you prepare for your role?
He would make me study films, news and medical history. He also encouraged me when I went to meet surrogate mothers in Bengal.
It was a life-risking event for me and till date, I don't know the exact location where I met them.
We had to change the dialect of the role based on the women I found there.
I had to put on slight weight since I played a new mother. Yet, we had action sequences, so my brother, who is a physical performance specialist, worked on my movement literacy.
Even the prosthetic cut over my belly had to be different from the regular caesarean birth cases. Unlike a horizontal cut, it had to be vertical to avoid being caught as it's not a very straightforward process legally.
There are many such details that I had to put into building this role.
Plus, I am not a mother and never had an abortion either, so I had to understand motherhood and child loss from anecdotal experiences of others.
I adopted my cat during this making just to understand motherhood in a better way.
How much of a background check did you do on Jhumpa?
Karan spoke with many doctors and legal experts, as did I. We would discuss long hours about the journey of migrant women and surrogate mothers.
We were lucky that I had access -- through a few documentary filmmakers -- to the underbelly of Bengal, who knew some women who run this underground business.
Since I didn't visit with a video camera, they opened up with their inner thoughts and fears.
In fact, they wanted me to tell their stories. I loved that trust.
A lot of your scenes require physical exertion. Was that tough on you?
Slightly, yes, because the geographical terrain was not easy.
The heat, dust, cold and wind in the jungle made me sick but we didn't stop shooting, as we had a small budget.
Most of us, including actors, the DOP (Director of Photography) team, Karan, we come from strong sports backgrounds and we fought with full endurance.
It wasn't as tough physically as it was emotionally for me to shoot Stolen.
What are Abhishek Banerjee and Shubham Vardhan like as co-stars and friends?
They are lovely boys. But during the process of our film's making, Karan ensured that we don't spend too much time together for the sake of our roles.
Since we all come from theatre backgrounds, particularly the Delhi stage, we got along smoothly, creatively.
The language of filmmaking that we believe in is also the same.
There is almost no age gap amongst us so there was no hierarchy despite the fact Abhishek brought in his commercial cinema experiences and Shubham and I brought in film and drama school expertise.
We were all learning from each other under the guidance of our director, as if it was the first time we were shooting a film.
In fact, AB taught me to fight for my own rights.
Shubham taught me patience.
They are both magic. We are a perfect team.
Are we seeing you in anything else soon?
My upcoming films are an Indo-American feature film in Telugu and Khoya language shot inside the forest sharing the borders of four Indian states -- Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Telangana.
The director is an American-born Indian filmmaker, Aditya Vempaty.
Nandita Das and Nassar are the two senior actors in the film along with local theatre actors from Hyderabad and the Adivasi tribe of this region.
It is the last film that the late Shyam Benegal sir was mentoring at its writing stage. The film is based on climate impact and is a period drama.
Stolen's DOP Ishaan Ghosh is also part of this team.
The other film is a short film based out of the Darbhanga district of Bihar, where I speak the Maithili language. The story is based on a child's sense of belonging and identity.
Actor Gagandev Riar is also a part of this short film directed by Omi Gupta.
I also continue my academic career as a theatre and film coach across the world associated with various schools and universities and film projects.
My focus is now to ensure if I can bring my internationally-released criticality acclaimed work The Braid by Laetitia Colombani to India since it's available on Netflix France, and various other channels across Europe.
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