RUBINA P. BANERJEE talks to Tisca Chopra about her journey so far.
Hailing from a family of educationists and being a straight A’s student put a lot of obstacles in the way of becoming an actress for Tisca. “There was resistance from my dad particularly because he thought I was a little too cerebral and my college principal was of the opinion that I should study abroad and return to become a professor at the same college. But the thought sent chills down my spine! I was done with studying. So I put my foot down and said I don’t wanna study anymore, I want to perform, I want to act. I’ve always been an introvert of sorts and for me it was very liberating to be in front of the camera…And the opportunity of living so many different kinds of lives and experiences in this one lifetime, completely through a film…”
The first film she did was an out and out commercial film. What was the experience like? Did it dampen her acting aspirations?
“It was a sorry time to be in movies, the worst kinds of films were being made, they were actually just projects and proposals, where they got some sort of a saleable actor.There was no art attached to that, nor a sense of cinema. There were just songs and dances and a story to string the dances along! I was aghast whenI had no lines for the role and asked them when they gave me the script, ki mere scenes kahan hai? They said, ‘Madam aapke chaar gaane hain!’ Heroines then were either a bar dancer or some sort of singer to somehow accommodate a song! In retrospect it was amusing, but at that point it was not exactly my idea of acting. Oodles of make-up, poker stiff frocks – you could actually take the actor out and the make-up could stand by itself! And then me being a novice, and knowing no better, I tried to do a Sridevi wig and a Madhuri Dixit something and a Juhi Chawla something and tried to mishmash and make something of it! I must say I came out looking rather ridiculous!”
What had her father to say about this?
“Not much, he just made a face like, ‘I told you so… and you can still go and join the IAS or IFS and it will still not be too late’. But I don’t know why I stuck around… I stuck around because I felt maybe there was something beyond this and fortuitously at that point somebody offered me a crossover film, BINODINI, one of the very initial ones, but it never came out. However it did renew my urge to act.
I came back and I took a breather and I started doing theatre exclusively for about five years as I felt I really had no preparation as an actor. You can’t become a doctor by putting a Band-aid on your brother, and say ki chalo ab main doctor ban sakta hoon. That’s just amateur! In Bombay I met a lot of wonderful people, prime amongst whom was Feroze Khan, the theatre director, and then Naseeruddin Shah. Naseer sir infact fed us, gave us coffee and the occasional cigarette, and let everyone really understand the joy of acting. So those five years were my internship to becoming an actor.
It was a pretty intense time because I would drive all the way to do like, a two-hour workshop with Ferozesir. I would go all the way to Film City or Whistling Woods and do an eight-hour workshop with Naseer sir discussing the character or watching other people perform. It was learning at its very best! It was this period that witnessed my first real acting offer… I was performing at Prithvi and Tigmanshu (Dhulia) came, and I don’t know what he saw in me because he said, ‘Tumko to main zaroor cast karunga’…I said ‘Aap promise kar rahe hain ya threaten kar rahe hain?’
Star Bestsellers happened with Tishu and that I see as my genuine acting debut. The episode was called ‘Ek Shaam Ki Mulaqa’t’and I acted with Irrfan, Himani and Raghu.It was Tigmanshu’s first non-television serial and came as such a relief, because it was like, I found my own people, like I came into a village where they were all like me and I was all like them! But films still eluded me. I was not sure of the kind of films I wanted to do, so I did the random HYDERABAD BLUES, and then television for three years.”
How different was television from theatre?
“It was a completely different kettle of fish. It’s like, you’re working with a knife and suddenly you have to use a laser to perform a surgery. You can only learn that by doing it and those three years in television were my preparation for becoming a cinema actor.I never thought of it deprecatingly ‘ki TV kar rahi hoon’. For me it was, ‘Ab mere saamne yeh hai to yehi hai’…and I did it intensely. Finally I went to Balaji, and showed them my show reel and was selected. I joined the show a little late in the day but it gave me time to study and understand the characters and how to shape mine in context. ‘Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki’ was my first genuine in-your-face success. There was a tremendous feedback for my characterand TRPs rose to like, 18 or 19 when there was a face-off between my character and Parvati and I got noticed. I knew then that I was connecting with the audience, and had learnt the art of connecting with people, through the camera.Anurag Kashyap once beautifully said, ‘Talent ki apni khushboo hoti hai, woh pahunch jaati hai’…And sure enough someone saw me on the serial and recommended me to Aamir Khan Productions. Despite the fact that they didn’t want a TV actor they auditioned me. Preparation for the audition entailed three days of shutting myself in my room, self-directing the scenes, and syncing in with the character of Maya Awasthi. It paid off and I went and did the most comfortable, beautiful audition that I could have done. After it was done I told myself if they don’t want me after this, they don’t want me!”
