 "Huma Qureshi on 'Maharani 3' success: 'The more local you are, the more global you become'")
A subject as dense as politics always needed longer format and thank god we now have a platform like OTT where length and complexities are never an issue. Creator Subhash Kapoor’s and director Saurabh Bhave’s Maharani is now entering its season three. A lot has happened in three seasons and three years. Rani Bharti, played by Huma Qureshi, was sucked into the world of politics after his husband Bheema (Sohum Shah) announced her as his successor. What followed next were some unexpected events of deceit, what else but politics, and now it’s time for revenge.
Talking about the show’s success, the leading lady said, “I think we’ve spent fairly enough time, and I’m speaking for both of us, our characters and their motivations their dreams, their desires and the conflict. So I think now when we work, I think there’s a greater understanding of the character. So you don’t have to start from scratch. But now the other challenge that one faces is what are the good.”
She added, “Like, for example, for me, if I can talk about it, like, for like she started such a simpleton and now she’s become this political animal and now she’s on this path of revenge against Naveen and all his gang. So what are the bits of her innocence of her niceness that I want to keep and what she will have to change or she will have to evolve.”
Citing the example of her debut Gangs Of Wasseypur, Qureshi stated, " I think the fact that I feel a lot of filmmakers are able to tell these very culture specific, region specific, language specific, heartland India stories is why they become so universally loved. I think there’s a line that Louis Bono said that the more local you are, the more specific you are the more global you become."
She continued, “And I think that pertains to cinema all over. Like when I saw, I remember my first film Gangs of Wasseypur at Cannes was completely blown because I’m like, wow how are these foreign press and this western audience enjoying a story about these people from dhanbad But that’s the beauty of human emotion that it’s so universal. And as long as you’re able to tell a very honest story, which is so unique to those people.”
Her co-star from the show Amit Sial also had something to add to the milieu of the show and stated, “It’s our responsibility as actors to understand the character and everything. And you rightfully said it always so happens that when you finish doing a scene or when you finish a scene per se and when you think about it after doing it, then there are a million other ideas that come to your head.that you could have done, which you didn’t do But that’s the dilemma that every actor, every performer always faces.”
He also talked about the cult of Mirzapur and said, “This has not been done before or not even been tried before And anyways, when OTT came, lot of things that happened I think it was very brave of Anurag Kashyap and all of you to get out a film called Gangs of Wasseypur in cinema because cinema was always very uptight, and at least there was a fight against that norm. But OtT was designed for that, I think to just ruffle the feathers and everything Or Mirzapur felt like home because I’ve been born and brought up in that kind of environment.”