Vidya Balan: “I said no to 'Jalsa' initially because I didn’t have the guts to delve into the grey”

Vidya Balan and Shefali Shah are seen together in ‘Jalsa’ playing two very powerful roles. Vidya feels that it is a great time for women actors as female roles are better nuanced and layered. Unfortunately, the male hero roles because of the expectation of them to be strong and macho are left with no scope to explore. Excerpts:

Challenges of playing a journalist.

I wanted to get it right. I missed the opportunity of visiting a newsroom because we shot for it immediately after the second lockdown. But I have been to newsrooms in the past and I have a sense of how things happen in the media and that helped me.  On top of that we had a director whose attention to detail is impeccable. I think I enjoyed playing someone  like Maya Menon who takes great pride in delivering the truth and playing the role of a person who is a very credible voice in the media.

I look up to many journalists for their professionalism and Maya Menon’s in Jalsa is one of them. For me, it was very interesting to play her and also given the context of the film where she always thrust the mike in front of people’s faces. Now the lens is strained on her. And while it is very easy to put another person on the stand, it is not so when you are put on the stand. It is challenging to know what you are going to do. This quandary made playing Maya Menon very interesting for me. I do think that she could have belonged to any profession that was not critical to the story. But the fact that she is a journalist raises the stakes and most importantly the kind of journalist she is.

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It’s been seventeen years since I have joined this profession.  I have also interacted with many journalists. But I have interacted far more with entertainment journalists as compared to those who cover hardcore news and that helped me a lot. And again, watching the news regularly helped me to do justice to the role of Maya Menon.

Do you think it’s a great time to be a woman actor?

I think it has been a great time to be a female actor for a long time now. Since 2008 since I first did ‘Ishquiya’, I have only been doing women-led films, barring maybe one or two of them. It is definitely an even better time to be a female actor now. Female roles are better nuanced and layered. Unfortunately, the male hero roles because of the expectation of them to be strong and macho, there is not that much scope to explore as a craftsman. They are just too predictable. In fact, I would say the male character roles are far more layered and interesting than those for the heroes.

On working with Shefali Sha…

Shefali Shah is someone I have always been in awe of as an actor. Every performance of hers has affected me and undoubtedly has affected loads of other people. When Suresh Triveni first told me that he wanted us together in the film, I was hopeful that it would work out, and thankfully it did. She gives her all in all the characters she plays and that’s what shows in all her performances. She can easily take things for granted because she has been celebrated as an actor for a long time now. But she never does that and that is admirable. That is where her hunger and her drive come from. Her honesty in her performances just shows.

Two honest performers getting together, how was it?

Unfortunately, we didn’t have too many scenes together, but now that I have watched the film, I feel it is just the right amount. And those scenes have that much more of an impact. We kept saying that we should have more scenes together, but when I watched the film, I felt it was the right number of scenes to have done together.

Your favourite scene and why?

A scene with my son in the film and the role is played by this boy Surya who has cerebral palsy in real life and I think one of my scenes with him where I have a meltdown, that was a huge challenge for me. It was heart-breaking because I had to be brutal with him. It was a very tough scene as an actor and as a human being.

What made you say ‘yes’ to Jalsa?

Undoubtedly the script and the fact that it is director and writer, Suresh Triveni who gave me the script. And we have done Tumhari Sulu together, but Jalsa and Tumhari Sulu are poles apart. In fact, I said no to Jalsa initially. And that was because I didn’t have the guts to delve into the grey. Then the pandemic happened and I realised life is grey and there is no black or white. I think that realisation allowed me to do the film. It’s the opportunity to play someone who doesn’t easily evoke empathy and to tell a story as emotionally engaging as it is gripping.

You play the role of a journalist who at some point is not making ethical choices, how difficult was playing that part?

All of us as humans have faced that situation to some degree in life when we have to make questionable choices. But the exploration of that on-screen was tough. On the screen, you are hoping to find some sort of justification to explain an uncomfortable behaviour, especially by your central protagonist. But then when I said ‘yes’ to the film the second time around, I knew I was okay to embrace Maya and her choices and her decisions the way Suresh has sketched her on paper.

Your takeaway from Jalsa?

My takeaway is that truth and lies are very subjective.

Why is the film called Jalsa?

‘Jalsa’ is a congregation of people coming together for a happy occasion, but here it is one accident that brings many people’s lives to collide. It is not just a head-on collision, but a lot of people come under the bus because of an incident.