Sheeba Chaddha: 'Wish I Was Given Other Roles In Addition To Mothers'

'Each mother I have played is different, but the writing dictates the doing of it. If it's written well, that's half the work done for an actor.'

Sheeba Chaddha is one of the busiest actresses in India. No month goes by where we do not see a series or a film with Chaddha showing us her acting skills, whether it is deeply tragic, or has comic tones.

Her latest work is in the limited television series Bait, created by Riz Ahmed. In the show, streaming on Amazon Prime, Chaddha plays Tahira, mother of a struggling British Pakistani actor Shah Latif (Ahmed) who dreams of playing the James Bond character.

Last year, British Indian filmmaker Aneil Karia's Hamlet premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Chaddha plays Gertrude in the film, the Queen of Denmark and mother of Hamlet (also Ahmed).

Karia said this about Chaddha: "She seemed to embody the role in a very lived in and physical way, that was really striking. It didn't feel like an actor performing this grand text. It felt like somebody living and breathing it."

Casting agent Tess Joseph first worked with Chaddha in West is West (2010), where the actress played Om Puri's daughter from his first wife. Joseph, who also worked with Chaddha for Hamlet and Bait said, "Sheeba's instinct is so spot-on. She is so flexible to play whatever we are giving her. She is like a chameleon who settles into whatever character she's asked to audition."

A graduate of Delhi University's Hansraj College, where she was a contemporary of Anurag Kashyap, Chaddha, who turns 54 on April 24, worked in theatre for a while before transitioning to films.

Aseem Chhabra spoke to Chaddha about her recent projects, exploring her other roles, her theatre work and her process of transforming into so many diverse characters. "I don't go prepared with anything. That doesn't work for me," she says. "So if you are asking about the process, I am quite unaware of my process."

Sheeba, while you have often played different mothers' roles -- and we will talk more about it a bit later -- in less than a year, you have played Riz Ahmed's mother twice. Your roles in Hamlet as Gertrude and in Bait as Tahira are so different. Did you shoot Hamlet first?

Yes, we shot Hamlet and six months later, I was on the Bait set. There was Riz, but the film and show have one common producer: Allie Moore. It was wonderful for an actor to play two very different roles. One often doesn't get such opportunities.

Tahira loves her son Shah (Ahmed). That great moment in the mithai shop when Tahira says to Shah's agent that as a kid, he used to say he had the license to kill. That motherly love, smile on your face is precious.
But I also loved how your character can be so bitchy, especially towards Nalia (Soni Razdan). Those curse words you use are brilliant. The writing is very clever.

Thanks. There is so many great lines in Bait. I don't think the curse words were anything special, I am sure I have used them before.

I understand the milieu of the Diaspora very well, since I lived in the US for two years. You are an outsider and an insider at the same time. It is such a difficult negotiation.

I have just touched upon one thing, but like you said, the writing is so clever in Bait. There are multitudinous layers. It is so authentic, very organic, lands what it has to say and is scorchingly funny.

Tell us about working with Riz. What does he bring out in you as an actor?

You are already feeling that you are working with Riz, but very quickly that gets out of the way. Otherwise, it is very difficult to work with somebody who comes with that weight. But he's a team player, very collaborative.

I also believe that the project is the king. The script is above and beyond everything. Since he was also the creator, Riz was always working. He was so sharply aligned with the integral core of the project, that you also worked towards that goal.

He's a very giving co-actor, open to ideas. He will say okay, we can try this, or we can try another way. He's not stuck with his way. He's an enabler for you to put your best foot forward.

It's the actors he casts. It was such a great ensemble, Guz Khan, Sajid Hasan and Aasiya Shah. Everybody wanted to do the best for Bait. No one came with a private agenda.

I hope people in India get to see Hamlet soon. One of my favourite scenes is just after the wedding ceremony when Hamlet has an argument with you. He smashes your head against a mirror and soon after, Polonius (Timothy Spall) gets killed. There is blood everywhere.
It's such a devastating scene. And through the scene you, as a newly married bride, are wearing a gorgeous gold sari. What was that like carrying your Indianness in a Shakespearean setup?

There was a beautiful moment in the middle of that scene between the mother and the son, where she says, 'Alas, you are mad.' The son who is everything to her is totally not there. But it was cut out. I always believed Gertrude suspected her child was not all there and he gravitated towards dark melancholia.

It didn't feel odd playing Gertrude wearing a sari in a South Asian milieu. The story of Hamlet is so universal. The language is Shakespearean, just a little bit of rearrangement here and there.

So if you commit to that story and emotions, my wearing a sari was the most natural thing. I would feel odd if I was wearing a gown.

I went back and saw clips of some recent sequences where you play mothers' roles. There's The Great Shamsuddin Family. Mira Nair gave you a small heart-breaking role in A Suitable Boy.
One of my favourite roles you have played is Rajkummar Rao's mother in Badhaai Do, especially the scene on the terrace when you put your hand on his chest, and he breaks down crying.
Aakash Chhabra's lovely short Warm Shadows was such a small project. I am sure you did not work on it for money.

I love Aakash's sensibility. Warm Shadows is such a gem, and it was only two days of work.

There are so many facets of motherhood that you have portrayed, and so many different energies that you bring. Where do these facets come from?

The different mothers are how they are written. These mothers are caught in stories, in the middle of different situations in their lives. They come from and go to different places.

Each mother I have played is different, but the writing dictates the doing of it. If it's written well, that's half the work done for an actor.

But I wish I was given other roles, in addition to just playing mothers.

I know it's not right to ask actors about their process, but I was thinking of some scenes from The Great Shamsuddin Family. There are moments here, and in many other films as well, where there are things going on in your mind.
We can see in your eyes. Then you surprise us with a smile or a look. How do you do that?

Yes, but I am a horror with continuity because many times the director would say, you did that, so do it again. And I would have forgotten what I did in that moment. That's not very cool because I should ideally be able to remember exactly what I had done.

But as you are saying, it is in the moment. Some two, three takes will be in a certain way, and then something might happen in the first or the fourth take only.

I don't go prepared with anything. That doesn't work for me. So if you are asking about the process, I am quite unaware of my process.

My actor friend Rajesh Tailang says, 'I think you like to keep it like that.' I think he's hit it on the head. I think I do like to keep it like that.

I don't ever over read a script. I will get through it once, but not revisit it. Unless it's something I need to figure out in terms of chronology. Other than that, I don't think through too much.

I don't like to have too many discussions unless there is a minor point here or there. Sometimes I like to have the director describe the character in a couple of lines. That helps me so I am able to do justice to what the director is thinking.

Finally, I think I am performing for the director when I am on a film set.

Even on the day of the shoot, I just rehearse the mechanics of the scene. I don't like to get into the emotional zone. So process wise, it's about arriving at the point the script requires, during the take.

There are scenes from Shamsuddin Family when there are so many characters in the shot. Or in the second episode of Bait when Soni Razdan's character steals the Eid party from you, but there's construction going on and security teams in the background.
Does your theatre training comes in handy when there are so many characters in one shot?

Life is also like that too, no? These scenes were trying to capture life as it is. But yes, years and years of theatre, and working with groups helps in those scenes. There are hundreds of people behind the camera on any set. In theatre, there will be only eight to ten people max.

Sometimes it's great to work with an ensemble in a mad way. I remember in Bait, it had become chaotic. In that scene that you mentioned, everybody was talking on top of each other. You would ad-lib a little in that chaos. It's great as long as you have a director who can call out to stop and cut.

When you are working with good ensembles, with actors who are giving and so present, I feel we all are working for the script. At times, it is fantastic to look and say how talented and crazy all of these actors are.

If you feed off their energy, you feed off their talent. Then you shine also.

Do you miss theatre? You did a lot of work with Rajat Kapoor and Atul Kumar. Rajat continues to do his Shakespearean productions with clowns speaking in gibberish.

Yes, I do miss it. I still watch a lot of theatre on my free days. Yesterday, I got a call from someone who is doing a play on the last day of Ghalib. It's a play with Ghalib and wife Umrao Begum. But the play required one-and-a-half months of rehearsals and there's no way I could commit to that. So I told them it would not be possible.

I would love to do a rehearsal reading.

I am also at a stage when I am really enjoying my film work. My daughter is in college and I am an empty nester, so all this work is helping me get through this phase. I get to work with so many interesting people.

Tess Joseph reminded me you were in West is West. I watched part of the film because I had forgotten you were in it. Tell us about working with Om Puri.

With Om Puri, I have done a lot of work. A series called Jasoos Vijay and a television show before the streaming services called Antaral. It also had Joy Sengupta and Aamir Bashir in it. And there are other films.

He was something else. You could see him in a range of works, the most mediocre and then the best of the best. Wherever he would be cast, it was always truthful. I was so much in awe of him.

Had you met him?

I interviewed Om Puri three times: for East is East, The Mystic Masseur and then for The Hundred-Foot Journey where he acted opposite Helen Mirren.

What were your experiences working with Irrfan?

I think I have undying love for Irrfan. Irrfan used to come and watch our plays.

There was a one tele film I did with him. It was a thriller, but never got released, It's with JioHotstar now. It's a beautiful story shot in the seminaries of Goa, called Boogie No 13.

You should watch him in a film called Kali Salwar. I have one scene with him in it. It's directed by Fareeda Mehta, who was Kumar Shahini's disciple. I think I may never get to see anybody who was quite like him, before him and after. Balraj Sahni comes to my mind. But I think there was nobody like Irrfan ever.

Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff, Satish Bodas/Rediff