Mallika Dua, Amyra Dastur, Shweta Tripathi on doing web shows and regrouping for The Trip 2

Bindass’ web series, The Trip is back with its second edition. A story of friendship, emotions, love, life and more, _The Trip 2_ , shot in Puducherry, stars Shweta Tripathi, Amyra Dastur, Sapna Pabbi and Mallika Dua in lead roles. For Tripathi, who has received acclaim for her roles in Masaan and Haramkhor, essaying a lighthearted, bubbly character in the series is a refreshing departure from the intense roles she usually plays in films. “We rarely make films on women’s journey and that is what excited me. How many times do we get to share space with women where they are not just skimpily clad or playing mere eye-candies? It is very heartening for me to see so many women associate and relate to our characters, plan trips. That’s when you know that the show is a success,” says Tripathi. [caption id=“attachment_5335141” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  A still from The Trip 2. YouTube screengrab[/caption] Tripathi plays Ananya, who is married in the second season of The Trip and incidentally, it happened post her real-life wedding. The actress married her longtime partner, Chaitanya Sharma, early this year. “In Ananya’s life, the major event is her marriage and season two picks up from there. The bachelorette trip happened in season one and in a few months from that, I went for my own bachelorette. My character is shown getting married on the show, so it was easy to understand where Ananya was coming from. While marriage can be about romance for other girls, for me it is more about self-discovery in the second season,” she says. “I enjoy playing dark or grey characters in films but The Trip is very lighthearted and that is the fun part. People like to put actors in boxes — ’this is arty, this is commercial, she is cute so she will do only these kind of roles’ — I want to break these stereotypes. I would like to believe that I am a simple and happy person but I want my characters to be crazy and out there; be on opposite end of the spectrum. I want my drama to be on screen,” says Tripathi. Amyra Dastur, who has entered the web world with The Trip 2, finds shooting for web shows a lot easier than films. “That’s because in a series, you are shooting in one go, you know your character’s graph whether it’s going up or down but with movies, you have different schedules and it gets a bit difficult staying in that character. For instance, I shot for Mental Hai Kya in May and now we are shooting again this month, so getting back in that frame of mind gets difficult,” says Dastur. The other aspect Dastur likes about miniseries is developing characters based on its imagined personality instead of auditioning the conventional way. “They gave me different scenarios. For instance, being stranded on a beach. What would I do? Or playing out a situation, say, a friend is getting married and she is getting cold feet, so what conversation would you have? We build my character,” says Dastur, who plays Ira in Trip 2, someone who was bullied as a child. “Ira is more like me than any other character I have played so far. She was bullied and as result of that, she shut down. We show how the other characters help her open up. They make her fall in love with herself all over again. It is a laugh riot. The whole show is hilarious and all of us together made it more fun,” says Dastur. Dastur also likes the more realistic approach in miniseries. “It is not the heavy, melodramatic stuff we usually see in movies. Even if we show a fight, it is very normal and realistic. You can see us acting like tomboys and not prim and proper girls. That is what I like because that is what most women are. We also act silly which is okay; you don’t need to be proper all the time,” she adds. There are a lot of new elements in the second season and that is the biggest change, says Mallika Dua while pointing out her romantic track and the inclusion of Dastur. “There’s a lot of romance, especially in Nazia’s (her character) life. I have a romantic track this time and I loved it. There’s a new character, Amyra’s, who plays my cousin on the show. So there’s an additional dynamic of going on a trip with a family member. The energy that Amyra brought in along with the three boys as part of the cast was so different. Also, this time it’s not a planned trip but the confusion in our lives remain the same. The season has been shot in India with women writer and director. So overall, a lot of changes have been introduced,” she said, adding, “But we really missed Lisa Haydon. She was three to four months pregnant when we were shooting season one but you couldn’t tell; she was fabulously fit.”