Interview: Shefali Shah

Rohini Hatangadi won a BAFTA for Best Actress for her performance as Kasturba Gandhi in Sir Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi. Filling the shoes of Ba for the latest Gandhi film — Gandhi My Father — will be Shefali Shah. The actress who was in town earlier this year to shoot for Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear, tells Pratim D. Gupta about the “challenge of a lifetime”.

It’s said that everyone in the cast had to go through many rounds of auditions. What about you?
That was the best thing. (Director) Feroz (Abbas Khan) at the very initial stage of scripting just wanted me to play Ba. It had to be Shefali, he said. Uma Da Cunha, who was casting for the film, told me that I was to do an important film and that it should be exclusive. Meaning I can’t work for any other film at that time.

That initially meant you couldn’t do Waqt opposite Amitabh Bachchan, being directed by your husband Vipul Shah?
Yes, I was asked to choose between Waqt and Gandhi My Father. Eventually things got settled because Vipul and Feroz are good friends. We could work out the dates. I still don’t know which film I would have gone for if I were to make that choice.

What did playing Kasturba Gandhi mean to you?
I was thrilled. It was a role any actor would die to do. I was really honoured to have been offered to play Kasturba Gandhi.

Does it put pressure on you that Rohini Hatangadi is synonymous with Kasturba Gandhi?
No... there’s no pressure. It doesn’t matter if I am better than her or she was better than me. All that matters is whether I have been able to be honest to Ba. There was never any competition. In Gandhi My Father it is finally about what a tragedy Ba went through. As a performance Rohiniji did a very good job.... But the way I see it, I do not want to be appreciated. People have to feel her pain.

Having been Ba, what, according to you, is the real origin of this pain?
The way I see it is that two men chose their own paths and followed them and the only person who got torn in between was Ba. So for Gandhi My Father to work, I believe that the audience must feel the pain that Ba depicts.

Mother to Akshay Kumar in Waqt. Mother to Akshaye Khanna in Gandhi My Father. You are making it a habit to play old women...
It is always difficult to play age. Because there is always a fear of looking caricaturish. What was easy about Waqt was that I had to play a definite age. In Gandhi My Father, I had to play the entire range from 20-25 years till she dies. And that is a very big journey. Any woman in her 30s or 40s is very different when she is in her 50s. Physically you can still adopt certain manners like talking slowly or walking with a hunch. But there are small details like I found out that my grandmother had the same voice when she was younger. You can’t really pinpoint how to go about playing age. If you hit it right, you are lucky. I know people who evaluate and research and do all sorts of homework. As for me, I go by my gut feeling. I can’t enact it, I have to feel it.

Do you think Gandhi My Father will do good things for your career?
The work I am doing now is some of the best work I have done so far. I have never done regular films. You look at Satya and Monsoon Wedding... both are benchmark films. Now, besides Gandhi My Father, there is Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear. All these are incredibly special films. And you can add Subhash Ghai’s Black & White and Rakeysh Mehra’s Dilli 6 to that list.

Why isn’t your husband Vipul Shah writing something for you?
He doesn’t owe it to me (laughs). You probably write films for Amitabh Bachchan. Otherwise it would become self-centred showreels. If there is something worthwhile he will definitely offer it to me. I wouldn’t cast myself if I am making a film.