‘I am very lucky to get accolades’
SHAHANA GOSWAMI HAS MESMERISED AUDIENCES EVERY TIME SHE CAME ON SCREEN. SHE SHARES HER PASSION FOR ACTING
Fifteen years ago, a 20-year-old Shahana Goswami made her debut in the Naseeruddin-Shahdirectorial Yun Hota Toh Kya Hota. Her fabulous performance in the film brought her more roles, including those in the super hit 2008-Farhan Akhtarstarrer Rock On!! and Reema Kagti’s
2011-rom-com Honeymoon Travels Private Limited.
Soon, Shahana was making waves. She was even seen with Shah Rukh Khan in the 2011-SciFi, Ra.One. Then, suddenly she vanished for some years, only to resurface in recent times with three back-to-back series, A Suitable Boy, Bombay Begums and the recently streamed The Last Hour, reminding us of the talent powerhouse she is.
The actress, who played Fatima in Bombay Begums and Meenakshi Mehra in Mira Nair’s A Suitable Boy, says she had ‘vanished’ because she’d moved out of the country for around eight years to satiate her wanderlust and her passion for better roles.
“There was a time when I was not getting the kind of roles I wanted to do,” she elaborates. “It was also when I wanted to travel around the world. I had never lived abroad. So I was working in films like the 2012film Midnight’s Children, the
2015-dramas Under Construction and Force of Destiny, etc. I also did the 2016film You Are My Sunday while living abroad. It was a new experience for me shooting for these international films and then going to promote them at various film festivals where they were screened.”
GETTING BACK TO RELEVANCE
Shahana seems grateful for the OTT, for the reach and access it has to films otherwise not available even in film libraries. “I have a few of my films online now, and some people have watched it. And then someone went back to watch Midnight’s Children and something else because it was available. I think the online platforms have allowed access to films not in a film library. So while earlier we had to often wait for a film to come on TV or DVD after it’d hit the theatres, the OTT platforms now allow a lot more and quicker access to those,” says Shahana. “As an audience, I am also discovering new filmmakers whose works I can look up.” Sadly, however, Shahana tells us with a sigh, there are a lot of films she’s done, which never came out in India and never released online and may never be seen. Nevertheless, the actress is grateful that people who’ve seen her works even back then liked it. “I am lucky to get accolades from people who’ve seen it. And though with these three back-toback projects, the volume about me is a little louder. But whether a whole generation of people would not have seen my works or known about me, the appreciation has always been there,” she says.
FINDING CONNECTION WITH HER ROLES
Bombay Begums had Shahana work with Pooja Bhatt and three other women in the Alankrita Shrivastava-directorial series, and her character Fatima often tugged at your heartstrings. But grounded as she is, Shahana is convinced that what people liked about her, whether in Bombay Begums or Mira Nair’s
A Suitable Boy, was how the characters were conceived.
“I am proud of everyone’s work in Bombay Begum and how it turned out,” she puts in. “In a sense, that’s perhaps the only show in which I am playing an obvious lead in the conventional sense and that’s changed things around. It got me the eyeballs, the attention. The character obviously fascinated me. It was nothing like who I am. Fatima was someone known to be compassionate and that you have to accept people with their flaws, and that you cannot judge them.”
Her affection for the character of Meenakshi Mehra in A Suitable Boy also seemed grounded to the way it was penned. “She was unabashed and authentic. A lot of people struggle and try to be real and authentic. And here she is, out of the box and keenly aware and it doesn’t affect her jolliness or love for life,” rattles off Shahana. Incidentally, Shahana’s latest series, The
Hour,
OTT Last was the first web series she had shot for. “I didn’t know what long format was going to be like. But we were shooting for three months in the North East. Amit Kumar, the creator of the show, is a very authentic person. Then there were others like Sanjay Kapoor and the rest of the crew. We all got along well because we were together for three months, spending time with each other without getting distracted. While we have our own set of friends in the city, here, we were enjoying each other's company,” she says.
In addition, what Shahana got a kick from while working on the series, was her character in the series. “I play a cop, and it explored the sporty side of me while working on it,” she says. For the unversed, Shahana was a sports champion in school, in athletics, basketball and volleyball. She even stood second in an artificial wall climbing competition in India.
Shahana tells us with a sigh, there are a lot of films she’s done, which never came out in
India and never released online and may
never be seen. Nevertheless, the actress is grateful that people who’ve seen her works even back then
liked it.
MORE TO COME
The clearly multifaceted woman had her odyssey in Odissi dance as well as acted on her impulse on enrolling for a course at the National School of Drama (NSD). “I trained in Odissi for ten years and lost touch with it after getting to Mumbai. But when I was doing an acting course at the NSD, one of my teachers, Pankaj Sir, told me to try it out as an actor,” says Shahana who was about fifteen or sixteen then.
Born to an economist father and an editorial consultant mother, Shahana had set her heart on becoming an actor at a young age. “Despite their different professions, my parents have been inclined to the arts,” explains Shahana, who’s done everything including playing Hanuman for one of her Odissi performances of the Ramayana.
The actress now plans to return to the arc-lights with a role in Kanu Bahl’s film alongside Manoj Bajpayee. “I have a short role in the film and I have shot for a day. I have a few more days of shoot left, which will happen when things get better,” elaborates the actress who has also done a few short films.
Shahana realises that she is privileged and makes you realise the joys she finds in the simple aspects of life. “You know,” she points out, “I worked enough and had luckily made
some money before the pandemic so I feel blessed to be going through the pandemic without any
monetary issues.”