‘In our country, people just assume that goodlooking people can’t act’
Sonnalli Seygall feels her background in modelling made it harder for her to get noticed as an actor
Actor Sonnalli Seygall, who has been a part of several beauty pageants in the past, says she has faced her fair share of prejudices when she started her acting career in Bollywood. And the reason behind it, she feels, is her modelling background.
Looking back at her journey, which started with Pyaar Ka Punchnama in 2011, she tells us, “I didn’t get any work between PKP and its 2015 sequel. It is not like I didn’t try. I would audition and meet people. But the only parts I got offered were negative ones, maybe because in PKP my character had shades of grey or that I was a beauty pageant contestant. I was only offered item songs or five-minute glam roles.”
And while that didn’t stop her from rising to prominence eventually, the Jai Mummy Di (2020) actor says it made the process slower. “In our country, people just assume that good looking people can’t act until you prove yourself like (actor) Deepika Padukone did in Cocktail (2012) or (actor) Anushka Sharma. My journey has been slow but upwards. I would have liked to shape [my journey] a bit differently. I didn’t have any support, but I did what I could and relied on my talent,” she says.
Noting how doors kept on opening since 2015, the 32-year-old shares she has competed six projects, including web and theatrical, since the pandemic. Talking about one of them, Noorani Chehra, which sees her star opposite Nawazuddin Siddiqui, she says working with him has been a master class in acting.
“Of course, your talent is there but if you have the right co-actor then the give and take is so right. As an actor, your performance gets elevated if you have the right co-actor. I am obviously not as experienced as Nawaz. But even my potential does not get explored sometimes. However, watching him perform and working with him was like going to an acting school,” she signs off.