People tried to put me in the pigeonhole, says Shibani

Sangeeta Yadav

From anchoring cricket tournaments, singing her own English compositions to acting in movies and now exploring the digital space, Shibani Dandekar’s diverse career choices have certainly helped her carve a niche for herself in showbiz. And in pursuit of making it big in the industry, she has made a conscious decision to “not let people put her in the pigeonhole”.

Shibani says, “When I was travelling from New York to London wanting to make it big as an artist, I did face a little struggle, but when I came to India, I got my first break rather easily. I was anchoring live cricket tournament and that worked best in my favour and was a great stepping stone in the industry.”

However,the artiste feels that the industry did try to categorise her talents. She adds, “People did try to put me in the pigeonhole by offering similar kind of things, which I avoided. The difficult part of my journey has been to try and avoid that.”

Shibani has spent most of her childhood in London, Australia and Africa and later had moved to New York City, where she had a career as a TV anchor. Thus, having an accent is normal for Shibani, which got her offers to play NRI roles in Hindi films.

“It was difficult for people to imagine me in different avatars. I am offered NRI roles, but now I’m getting more and more roles of urban women especially in the web space and some of them are really good. Because I have an accent when I speak, I want to cash in on this by exploring some good work in Hollywood as well,” she shares. The 39-year-old actor, who will next be seen in second season of Four More Shots Please!, feels that the digital space has given a lot of boost to a lot of actors, and she now aspires to explore more such opportunities. “The industry is changing; there are more platforms to create new content and experiment, too. There are so many things an artist can do. You know what direction you have to head in. I aspire to do more and more work on the web space and create my own content,” says the actor.

Because I have an accent when I speak, I want to cash in on this by exploring some good work in Hollywood as well.