Acclaimed actress Neena Gupta known for her work in both art-house and commercial cinema has spent about four decades in the movie industry having worked with some of the stalwarts and great creative minds including Shyam Benegal, Kundan Shah, Mahesh Bhatt and Subhash Ghai among others, but when asked if she looks back thinking those were the days and her answer is a clear ‘No’. “I never got even one-fourth of what I have got now, so there is no way that I would be looking back. I live in the moment,” she says. “Creatively I feel more satisfied now. I never imagined that at this age I will get such interesting and different kinds of parts to play, and that too in films, not television,” says the two-time National Award-winning actress (Bazaar Sitaram, 1993; Woh Chhokri, 1994).
Gupta’s career took a new shift after she played a middle-aged mother who unexpectedly becomes pregnant in Badhaai Ho (2018) -- the film with which she found her fame again. Despite the fact that she has been working in the Hindi film industry since the early 1980s, the actress says, this was the first time that she got the kind of attention and applause for her performance. One may recall that the 62-year-old veteran actress who also starred in hit television shows like Buniyaad, Saans (that she also wrote and directed), posted on social media asking for work, sometime in 2017. The perception that she was not doing films was fuelled by the fact that there was a gap in her filmography between 2015 and 2018. Gupta posted a beautiful picture of herself which was captioned as, ‘I live in Mumbai and working as a good actor looking for good parts to play’, the post that even inspired Priyanka Chopra.
“Things have changed a lot for me after that Instagram post. I got many offers since then-- five, in fact, and I accepted all of them. The first film offer came from Anubhav Sinha for Mulk, then I did Dibakar Banerji’s Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, and then came Panga followed by Badhaai Ho and that was the kind of break I was looking for many years. Since then I have been doing some very good work. Once pandemic eases I want to get back to my shoots,” says Gupta.
Last year, she was seen in two web series: Panchayat and Masaba Masaba. In the former, she played a woman rooted in the north Indian heartland while in the latter, she played herself: A chic woman and mother of designer Masaba Gupta. As of now, the actress is garnering praises for her titular role in the recently released Sardar Ka Grandson in which she plays a 90-year-old matriarch, the role she was hesitant to play initially.
“Actually my immediate reaction was that I don’t want to play a 90-year-old woman but when Kaashvie (Nair, Director) narrated the script to me I got very excited. I felt it was the most challenging part I have ever done and the script was very nice. My role was amazing. There was no question of thinking twice about it,” she says. “But there were many challenges in terms of getting the look right and putting on prosthetics to play a 90-year-old. We did a lot of experiments; we tried many things because our main aim was that the prosthetic should not come in the way of my acting and facial expressions. It should not look like some stone. It was quite a tough thing for me because I had to be in it for 12 to 15 hours and it was very cold. It would take two hours to put it in and over one hour to remove it. We did a lot of hard work to achieve the right look. But overall it was great fun because we were shooting during winter in Patiala. Food, as well as company, was lovely. We had Kanwaljit (Singh, Gupta’s co-star from Saans) and Soni (Razdan, her co-star from Buniyad), Arjun (Kapoor) was always joking around..” she further adds.
Playing a much older person may not matter to Gupta if the role was meaty enough as she willingly played even Kanwaljit Singh’s mother in Sardar Ka Grandson. “It is no big deal, it is just playing a role…there was nothing awkward about it,” she says. But it definitely mattered to her when the part was insignificant and she had no choice and was in dire need of work which happened in the past, as she says, “When I had nothing and I needed money it did matter to me then. I have played the role of mother of people who were older than me because I needed work. But now things are very different. I take up roles that I like and say ‘No’ to the rest. I have the courage to say ‘No’ now which is a very important thing for me. It wasn’t possible in the past,” she says candidly. When asked if she had to change something in her past, she quips, “I would focus more on work rather than other things.”
Not just for her movies and web series, Gupta has also been in news for her memoir titled Sach Kahun Toh that will release on 14 June. In a video shared on social media, Gupta is seen announcing her autobiography and excitedly giving a peek into the first copy that she has laid hands on. “Actually what you see in the video...that is not excitement, that is nervousness (laughs heartily). The book will talk about the events and my life story in the most unapologetically honest manner. Once people read it reactions will start flowing but right now there is a lot of curiosity about the book but nobody knows what is in there. I also don’t know what I have written…Now it is all ram bharose.. if people like it great and if they don’t it is okay I can’t really do much about it. I wrote during the last lockdown so I got a lot of time to think when I was writing. I wrote it in Mukteshwar which is one hour ahead of Nainital. My husband and I spent the whole lockdown last year in this beautiful mountain house,” she says.
While some of her projects are complete and ready to release, there are some that she is waiting to start again once permission to begin shooting is granted. “I was shooting for Vikas Bahl’s Goodbye (co-starring Amitabh Bachchan and Rashmika Mandanna) when the lockdown happened. The set is still standing there so we will have to finish that one first. Then, I have to give dates to season two of Masaba Masaba and Panchayat. Dial 100 (Rensil D’silva directed thriller co-starring Manoj Bajpayee and Sakshi Tanwar) and an old film Gwalior (social thriller) with Sanjay Mishra is ready to release. I also have an international project Goldfish directed by Pushan Kripalani who did The Threshold with me. I play the main part and it is set in London. There are two more films to be announced and I can’t talk about it right now,” says Gupta, adding, “I am very happy and thankful to God that I am here in this space of Indian cinema which has changed quite a lot and I am a part of it.”
When asked if she still feels the need to do riyaaz (practice) and hone her acting skills, the actress says, “Right now riyaaz for me is to look after my health and try and reduce my bad habits. No matter what happens I do my yoga for one hour in the morning and I walk for one hour in the evening. I keep control of my food habits because I get a bad stomach easily and then my immunity goes low. An actor’s auzaar (tool) is their health and one has to keep that auzaar sharp. I keep trying to do that, at times I fail, at times I pass,” she says, signing off.
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