‘Playing fictional characters requires a lot more homework’
Post her character of Safia in the recently released film Manto, actor Rasika Dugal has earned experience in playing not just fictional characters but also those that are inspired by true incidents and real-life people. While one may think that justifying a real-life character on the silver screen is a tougher deal, Rasika feels otherwise.
“I think fictional characters require a lot of homework. We tend to think that we don’t have to do a lot of homework but in reality, for such characters, you have to make the entire story up, because it’s not a real-life character. In cases such as these, when people get lazy, you can feel the gap in the story,” Rasika says. For her role as Manto’s wife Safia, Rasika had met Manto’s daughters as well as Safia’s sister. The only added pressure on playing a real-life character was to live up to expectations. “It seems that there was a responsibility on me but only because I had to live up to the expectations of families who had lived with them,” she says.
Rasika, who has been part of films such as Qissa (2015) and Hijack (2008), had represented India at the Cannes film festival earlier this year. Comparing the excitement of premiering her labour of love on a global platform and the home turf, she says both are equal in their own way. She says,“It’s prestigious to get validated at [International] festivals, especially Cannes. But both of the platforms are important.”
We tend to think while playing fictional characters, we don’t have to do a lot of homework but in reality, for such characters, you have to make up an entire story.
RASHIKA DUGAL
ACTOR