Miss Chatterjee Vs Norway: When Rani Mukerji shared how 'bringing Sagarika Chakraborty’s emotions, trauma was a huge responsibility amid National Award win'': 'I tried to portray the shock &...'

After entertaining the audience for close to three decades, Rani Mukerji won her first National Award last evening for her performance in Mrs Chatterjee vs Norway, a film that was inspired by true events. The actress has delivered many powerful performances in her career, like Talaash and Black, but something resonated a lot with this 2023 drama as it became a critical and commercial success.

Rani Mukerji has all the reasons to celebrate this win and as she takes home her first National Award for Best Actor (Female), it’s time to revisit her exclusive interview with Firstpost that happened post the release and success of her film. In that interview, the actress spoke about what touched the audience, and the responsibilities of essaying the role of a mother.

Mukerji had revealed, “I think the success of the film is because of the audience, you know, if the audience hadn’t given the film a chance then you and I wouldn’t have been doing this interview. I believe that good cinema will find its audience. And this is what happened with this film, and I’m really grateful to the audience for having given the film a chance on the big screen.”

The actress added, “Because the most fashionable word today among cinema lovers is ‘OTT content. This really bothers me because I am a cinema child and I have grown on a diet of big screen cinema. And for me, I believe in the ‘magic of cinema’. I believe that a cinema has to be so personal that when you go into that movie theatre, where it is all dark and it is your connection with that character of the film, and you can completely immerse yourself in the experience of the movie.”

On the responsibilities of playing a mother

“The role of bringing Sagarika’s emotions, her trauma and a story of a mother was a huge responsibility for me and I tried to portray the shock and ordeal of a mother being separated from her children and to the anger and frustration of not understanding the law and order of another country and not understanding as to why would something like this happen to her,” said the actor.

She added, “There was a varied range of emotions that I had to portray through this film and through  Sagarika’  s journey. I believed that it was my duty to portray her emotions to the best of my ability because to make an audience as to what a mother has been through because it was a range of different emotions that happened at different points of time and her determination and belief that she is going to win her children back.”