A Star is Born. Again

SHE IS DRESSED in a yellow brocade sari, he is in a white churidar achkan with gold highlights. Bathed in a warm glow, he stands up from his table when she approaches, and introduces her to their would-be in-laws. “Meet Tulsi,” he says, “my whole and soul.”

Outside the five-bedroom set in Film City, spread over 10,000 sq ft, a gentle evening rain falls silently. Inside the imposing gates of Shanti Niketan, with a tulsi plant growing in the drive­way, a drama is unfolding. Tulsi, played by Smriti Irani, and Mihir Virani, played by Amar Upadhyay, returning to televi­sion 25 years after they first debuted on the same day on Kaun Banega Crorepati, are meeting their daughter’s prospec­tive in-laws in a new iteration of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, to be aired on Star Plus and JioHotstar simultaneously beginning July 29.

It is big news and all eyes are on Smriti Irani, the woman at the centre of it all, calm, easy, spontaneous, smiling. She is returning to entertainment cam­eras after 11 years. The last time she was facing a movie camera, it was on the sets of a film with Rishi Kapoor. “When I told him I was needed at the Centre by my party he urged me to run,” she says.

And now here she is, in a role that made her the beloved of millions, as the mother protector, role model, ideal wife, and iconic daughter-in-law. It put Star TV on the map of Indian entertain­ment, made Ekta Kapoor a powerhouse of ideas, and defined a generation. The show, which ran for 1,833 episodes, between 2000 and 2008, features the Viranis, a wealthy Gujarati family, whose US-returned son, Mihir, marries Tulsi, the daughter of the family priest. In the eight years that it ran, the series saw births, rebirths, marriages, marital rape, filicide, adoptions, divorces, mur­ders, and much more.

It gave a young model economic security beyond her wildest dreams. “I was just focused on the paycheck. Ekta was convinced it was going to be his­toric. For someone who earned `1,600 a month, the idea that you could earn it in a day was unheard of,” says Irani now, tossing aside the surprise it caused then, playing a mother in her 40s when she was in her twenties. “I was never in it for the pursuit of fame,” she says. “I was a simple, everyday girl, and was happy to embrace my character’s age.

I would keep whitening my hair and Shobha Kapoor [Ekta’s mother and co producer] would keep calling the cam­eraperson to tell me to colour my hair. I slowed down my walk and my voice. Ekta and I always approached Tulsi as a flesh-and-blood character.”

There is a generation of mothers who sat with their mothers who are now tell­ing their children to watch the show.

The series changed the lives of others as well. Muzammil Desai, a 15-year-old assistant on the show, is now the director. The DoP Deepak Malwankar is now a veteran, and Rehman Siledar, the makeup man, has come back to do his magic. “When we came together to do the show, we had nothing. We were all in rented homes, none of us had a car, and we had no stable income. I can now proudly say that our EMIs are paid, and from nothing we have moved to owning something,” she says.

For Irani, a lifetime has passed, with her career in politics taking off. She lost the 2014 Lok Sabha election in Amethi, but returned as a giant killer in 2019, vanquishing Rahul Gandhi. “But I have always kept my two lives separate,” she says, “not wanting to be accused of exploiting it for political gains.” It’s another matter that she became one of the country’s most recognisable faces.

“I still remember my first visit to Australia after Kyunki started. I was a young mother and had to join my fam­ily there. Suddenly there was a public announcement paging me. Just as I was wondering what had happened, I went to the Qantas counter, and I was greeted by a group of excited young airport staff. They wanted a photograph,” she says. Till then she had been so absorbed in maintaining her grinding schedule that she hadn’t had time to notice her growing fame. “Later at Darling Harbour in Sydney, we were crossing the road for pancakes, someone from across the street waved to me, saying ‘Hi, Tulsi’,” she recalls.

Just as her screen image as televi­sion’s first lady was growing, so was her political prominence. She joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2003. The following year, she was appointed vice-president of the Maharashtra Youth Wing. In the General Elections held that year for the 14th Lok Sabha, she contested against Kapil Sibal from the Chandni Chowk constituency in Delhi. She lost. “Imagine if I’d won,” she says, in a break from the shoot.

She didn’t and she continued playing Tulsi till 2008.

WHAT FOLLOWED WAS a series of challenges, some won, some lost. She was made a Rajya Sabha member in 2011 from Gujarat. She lost Amethi but was given the prestigious portfolio of Human Resource Develop­ment in 2014. “People in Delhi thought I had no political career before 2014. Similarly in television, I remember people coming up to me and expressing surprise that I could deliver speeches. During the Kyunki years I had gone on a dharna with Nitin Gadkari ji and we had got arrested. It was a lunch break and there was panic. Where was I? And they were told I was in jail in Navi Mumbai. And the women in the area came to the police station and demanded to know how Tulsi had been arrested,” she says.

Five years later, she won from Amethi, defeating Rahul Gandhi, be­coming minister again. She lost Amethi in 2024, and since then has devoted herself to working for women with the Alliance for Global Good—Gender Eq­uity and Equality. Her last position was as the head of the Ministry of Women and Child Development. So why return to Tulsi now? “A lot of people were intrigued whether I still had the desire to act. I think the timing was right. The nostalgic value of the 25th anniversary, the confluence of digital and television platforms, Ekta’s transition to movie making. As a creator I saw she was very different from what she was two decades ago. Then Uday Shankar was heading a big chunk of the network, his understanding of the news and political landscape is extraordinary. He has had a lot of historic firsts. To see all of it com­ing together was exciting,” she says.

She goes on, “There comes a time after establishing yourself that you want to experiment, when you have to feed your spirit as to what the corners of your life would look like if reimagined.” Then there was the lure of a limited series. “As Kumar Vishwas told me, ‘Shastra tange hai, chalana nahi bhule the (You have hung up your weapon but not forgotten how to use it)’”. She adds, “It was meant to happen. It was as if the two parts of my life were running parallel and the twain never met. When the first Star TV promo aired, the barrier between the real and reel was finally gone.”

The beats of her life are well known. Daughter of a Punjabi-Maharashtrian businessman and a Bengali working woman who was housekeeper at Taj Mahal Hotel, Delhi, Smriti Malhotra grew up mostly in RK Puram, Delhi, and went to Holy Child Auxilium School. The eldest of three sisters, she grew up with a sense of responsibility and started work early. From selling cosmetics on Janpath in Delhi to swabbing floors at McDonald’s in Mumbai, she has done it all. She entered the Miss India pageant in 1998, broke into the Top 10, got a job in television, before catching the eye of Ekta Kapoor’s mother while hosting a few episodes of the music countdown show Bakeman’s Ooh La La.

She has had a long media journey, choosing to switch careers when she was at her peak. And when she spoke, it was invariably for the prime minister or the government, never for “personal glory”. “In my 15-year journey as a politician, I have always been conscious not to leverage my media popularity to gain an additional political foothold. When Mr Modi was chief minister I spent a good four-five years defending him as the MP from Gujarat. I have tried to contribute to policy and legislation,” she says, adding, “I never faced the news cameras willingly.” She has never confused an adoring crowd with one that wants attention for its problems. “I needed to break two myths—that those who come into politics from other fields do it when their careers are on the downslide and that they are so much in love with themselves that they can’t be away from the cameras,” she adds.

And she has largely avoided an en­tourage, both politically and in showbiz. “People want to create an enigmatic air about themselves. I pick up my phone myself, which continues to amaze people. I remember Jaswant Singh telling me in 2003 that Delhi is unforgiving if you don’t have an entourage of journalists to support you. But all the stalwarts like him were kind to me. Atal Bihari Vajpayee as PM asked me to give him feedback from a fishing village when I was in the Yuva Morcha. And Advaniji took time out to teach me. I’ve grown up in the system. Devendra Fadnavis was the vice presi­dent of the Yuva Morcha, Dharmendra Pradhan was the president. Nitin Gadkari called the president of the state Yuva Mor­cha asking him, ‘Why have you taken this old woman into the organisation?’ He thought I was as old as Tulsi. I have fought in the trenches and earned the respect of my colleagues. I believe in transparency. If I do not want to engage with someone, I say so. In politics, my job is to deliver what is right for the greater good, or stand up for the inconvenient truth.”

Success and failure have defined her paths, she says. When she lost in 2024, the one reaction she heard from everyone was, “But you’ve worked so hard.” She adds, “I went to every village from cleaning nallas to getting bodies. I built roads connecting 800 villages, made one lakh homes, built a hospital, connected Amethi to the national high­way.” But she has no regrets. She has been a full-time politician and a part-time actor. “I have been at the receiving end of a barrage of insinuation and in­sults because I defeated Rahul Gandhi. There was bound to be a backlash but I seek no validation from anyone.”

So, she reaches out to both an old man who touches her feet on the banks of the Ganga in Haridwar when they are shooting, and a young golgappa hawker outside Ekta Kapoor’s home who asks for some work to be done in his home town Amethi.

She has done it all. She has been the Queen of Daily Soaps, a Union minister, lost and won elections, written a bestsell­ing thriller, and returned to the screen that made her a star. And she is still only 49. If the fifties are the new forties, Irani’s twin careers may be in for more reinven­tion. As she says, with a laugh, “Just when they think they know you, it’s fun to surprise them.”

actorBJP leaderentertainmentKyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu ThipoliticianSmriti IraniTV