Breaking Rules with Richa

“I should not be here,” says Richa Chadha. She’s played an old woman, a sister, a bhabhi, a goondi. “I should not be here with my attractive husband (Ali Fazal, actor), without following a single rule of Bollywood,” she says. At 37, she is not only one of the shining stars of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Netflix series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, but also a producer of the Sundance Film Festival hit, Girls Will Be Girls. The St Stephen’s College graduate remembers Dibakar Banerjee, who directed her in her debut Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008). Richa had portrayed the aspirational girlfriend Dolly, and Banerjee had told her: ‘I hope the industry will be kind to you’. And it was, she says, despite making mistakes. Having seen her career since 2008, one can safely say she will be here for a long time. “Women have ceased to be defined by their age,” she says. Indeed, her role in Heeramandi is testament to that, playing a tawaif who lives in the delusion that her nawabi paramour will marry her. In a heartbreaking dance, as she bids goodbye to a gathering where she is invited to celebrate his marriage to someone else, Chadha puts in decades of kathak learning, raw pain and pure trauma. When she exits the mehfil with a laugh which is a cross between a sob and a hiccup, it is a moment to watch. Of the men in the industry, Chadha says it is very awkward to see a 60-year-old man in chapri (street) clothes—a mesh vest, jacket and jewellery. “It’s not about dressing your age. Snoop Dogg dresses like that and he is 52. But he dresses to his personality. Not so here. I find it a bit cringe.” There’s nothing cringe about Chadha who is authentic to the core. And as she awaits a new home production, an Ali Fazal-Richa Chadha collaboration, their baby, more power to her.

Learning from Mahi Chachu

She’s the star of a charming new show on Prime Video called Dil Dosti Dilemma but Anushka Sen, all of 21, with 3 crore followers on Instagram is the picture of level headedness. Sen plays Asmara, a cool Bangalorean who is suddenly sent off to her seemingly ultra conservative Muslim grandparents in the old part of town, away from fast-fashion stores and coffee lounges. It is meant to be a punishment, but Asmara slowly realises there is much to treasure about the values and ways of her grandparents, even as she convinces them to change their minds on certain things. Playing a teenager was no sweat for Sen who has just about graduated from teendom, and Asmara’s quality of standing up for the truth and standing against injustice is something that resonated with Sen. “I also liked the idea of the pressure to fit in which the show talks about and how being yourself is much more important,” she says. Sen has been a star on television for some time now and has done 14 ads over seven years with cricket superstar Mahendra Singh Dhoni. “I call him Mahi chachu and when I see how down-to-earth and respectful he is with everybody I realise that is what success is about,” she says. “My father constantly points that out to me when I get over excited about something,” says Sen. Based on Andaleeb Wajid’s novel, Asmara’s Summer (2016), Dil Dosti Dilemma is everything one expects in a youthful romcom, including a dreamy-eyed leading man, played by Kush Jotwani, who is a star to watch. Tanvi Azmi plays Asmara’s grandmother with a big heart with such grace that it makes the novel come alive. In a nice touch, Wajid also makes an appearance as herself at a concert, where things are left hanging, leaving us waiting for the second season.

How To Market a Movie

If anyone is confused about premieres for web series and streaming movies, don’t be. This is the latest marketing technique for movies and series which don’t have either big spends or big stars. The screenings are called ‘family and friends’ screenings and usually depend entirely on the goodwill of the producer or director. So whether it was Netflix’s Amar Singh Chamkila, or Heeramandi, also made for Netflix, both relied on their star directors to spin their rolodexes to call their former stars, mentors and friends. The trend was kicked off by The Archies, which seems to have been cast only to ensure the red carpet appearance of the actors’ extended families. From Amitabh Bachchan to Shah Rukh Khan to Boney Kapoor, director Zoya Akhtar was able to pull in every Bollywood family for the premiere. The paparazzi do the rest, transferring the images to the rest of the world. Akhtar follows this formula that the Cannes film festival red carpet has used extensively.

Anushka SenBollywoodcinemaRicha ChadhaZoya Akhtar