Not Just Bollywood | Tillotama Shome on Delhi Crime and more: ‘OTT has given actors like us the accessibility to work’

It never matters to actor Tillotama Shome who she plays. Over the years she has played characters that are marginalised, and that has made her hyper aware of not letting her body and mind give in to any tired clichés of claiming ‘authenticity’. The attempt is to find something unique about the character and run with it as honestly as possible. When she played the role of maid time and again, in Sir and Monsoon Wedding, people asked her how she prepared to be a maid? To which she had to say I didn’t prepare to be a maid, I just wanted to understand what her desires were. This character of Karishma, the role that she played in  Netflix’s Delhi Crime Season 2 , has very high aspirations in life and wants to take the short cut and has low morals, Tillotama believes these are regular people whom you meet on a regular basis.  When asked on understanding the complex character of Karishma and how she did it, Tillotama says, “After I graduated from NYU in drama therapy, I worked at Rikers Island and I did drama therapy with male and female prisoners. To answer the question, that was the exposure. I worked with them for two years which is called a corrective facility. The line between being guilty and non-guilty is a very thin line and a line that any one of us can trip over. This was the lesson that I learnt while working with the prisoners.”

Karishma is the story of a girl who had dreams and aspirations, but she was getting beaten up by reality. She says, “I too have dreams in the industry of being an actor, but I am not going to kill anyone for it. Again I cannot separate myself from Karishma. I empathise with her. For a woman who is not maternal, you will be crucified for that in our society because it is a genetic aberration. It’s like a woman doesn’t care for her child. My question is why is this question not asked to the fathers in our society.” In playing Karishma, she really had to feel the conviction that she had in her ability, her potential to do something in life. The character of Karishma in Delhi Crime shows that she is a capable and ambitious woman. She has picked up social etiquettes from her clients. She dresses in a certain way which is way above her rank. In a very honest way, Tillotama says, “Sometimes, I too want to go beyond the desires of what our predecessors had access to. I tried my luck as an actor at thirty in Bombay and I was told this is not the age to get any work. But the disbelief in those words was stronger and the belief in my ability to dream the dream I want to dream and to be a professional actor is what kept me alive. So, I had to focus on what makes Karishma have these desires. That is the only way I could humanise her aspirations. And also the other aspect is there are certain people who serve us, the service industry. They are invisible to us in our society and we really need to understand their sentiments.” Tillotama explains that she has also felt this humiliation, disregard and not being seen in the industry the way she wanted to by the people just like her character Karishma in Delhi Crime. “In most stereotypical films, I have seen what makes a superhero a superhero important. But we don’t want to know what makes a criminal a criminal,” she adds. Women’s roles are getting layered with the help of OTT. But she believes whatever work she has done in the past she got to play characters that were really well written for women. She says, “I haven’t done too much work pre OTT boom. In terms of opportunities OTT has given us is huge. But it’s work in progress and we have a long way to go.” The kind of characters and scripts that she is getting in the last two years and the density of people who want her to work in their films and shows is unimaginable. “Now, I am doing four to five projects in a year. I didn’t have that luxury. Getting one project a year was also difficult. OTT has given actors like us the accessibility to work. That has changed the game for us.” [caption id=“attachment_11331651” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Tillotama Shome in Sir[/caption] But again, Tillotama believes that it is very easy to get lost in a deluge of opportunities and the time line and the pressure. Narrating a phase of her life when she didn’t have much work, she says, “I went through a period of frustrations and I wallowed in it and I made a meal out of it. It was so acidic that anger that I had to let it go. I felt this anger was futile. It was like drinking poison myself and expecting someone else to die. I remember two very clear years when I was knocked off a project which was very dear to me. I had to really pull myself out of it. Then I promised myself that I am going to make myself so good by working on my Hindi which wasn’t too good, doing writing work, seeking out life experiences.” She polished her craft to the best she realised that nobody wants to work with an angry disgruntled person, so it is best to work on oneself, so that you don’t have regrets that you have not given your best. Read all the  Latest News _,_  Trending News _,_  Cricket News _,_  Bollywood News _,_  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook _,_  Twitter  and  Instagram