Time stamps:
3.30 Masaan
8.05 Haraamkhor
15.20 Mirzapur
21.25 Gone Kesh
27.05 Laakhon Mein Ek Season 2
31.03 Kaalkoot
First impressions can be deceptive — actor Shweta Tripathi, a petite bubbly girl, reinforces this saying. Although her broad smile and tinkling greeting are what you notice first, she soon draws you into a thoughtful analysis of her journey so far, where she switches into serious mode with seamless ease.
A “talkaholic” by her own confession, she changes gears smoothly between a multitude of topics, ranging from light-hearted ones like the colours of the fashion season to weighty issues that continue to loom large in different pockets of our society. A similar broad spectrum of subjects — driven by her interests — tints her work, even though she admits that she has grown up on a diet of cheerful shows similar to her small-screen debut Kya Mast Hai Life in 2009. She delights in being in her own little “Disneyworld” full of tenderness and colour, a happy predilection that seems to spill over into her presence on Instagram.
With Tripathi, it takes us a minute to make the jump from her real-life persona to her many reel avatars. As a performing artiste, she has repeatedly proved her chops on screen with roles that have packed quite a punch over the last decade or so. Her choice of characters in her innings so far, the actor says, has been prompted by her desire to encourage her audiences to sit up and think about what they have seen — not just switch off after “The End” has flashed on screen. “I…like making people uncomfortable. I want to spark conversations. I want you to ask questions,” she says.
Despite her “bubbliness”, it is evident to anyone who has tracked her growth that a serious dedication is at the core of her work ethic — the 39-year-old has deliberately veered away from being mere arm candy in films, choosing to play divergent characters. Her alter egos — almost all of them are younger than Tripathi was when she played them — range from the simple Shaalu Gupta (Masaan), the innocent Sandhya (Haraamkhor), the troubled Enakshi Dasgupta (Gone Kesh), the traumatised Parul Chaturvedi (Kaalkoot) to the more nuanced Gajagamini “Golu” Gupta (Mirzapur, Seasons 1-3). And in the second season of the fast-paced juicy thriller Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein, Tripathi cleverly reprises her role as Shikha Agarwal.
Tripathi has learnt to approach each character differently, even as she takes into account the director’s vision that shapes each performance and project. She curates a playlist of songs for each one and it helps the performer to get into the zone while prepping. For the more complex acid-attack survivor Parul, she curated two playlists — one, to understand the character before the tragic episode happened and the second, to get into her psyche after it. And for the multi-layered — and critically acclaimed — Golu, her playlist was more hardcore. It was full of metal and rock, and conveyed a lot of anger and loss. All of it is part of her attempt to do full justice to the role. She emphasises, “I really like it when I don’t see Shweta on screen…when I see only my alter ego, woh mujhe bahut achcha lagta hain [I like that very much]. When I am stepping into the shoes of a character…I prefer to feel and think like my characters because I think Shaalu ka rona [crying] will be very different from Golu ka rona, and that will be very different from Enakshi ka rona and will be very different from Parul ka rona. There are so many things that come into play. And I think that’s one amazing thing about being an actor, that you keep taking feathers from your characters. And you keep adding them and you make yourself even more colourful.”
Her ability to observe and absorb has helped her hone her skills. While being famous might, she admits, curtail her interactions in public, she emphasises that she “wants to experience different things, because only when I go out and meet people from totally different walks of life can I add those elements to my characters”.
And many learnings have come from her interactions with co-actors. For example, working with Nawazuddin Siddiqui in Haraamkhor was “huge” for Tripathi. From him, “I understood a lot about actors and the mutual respect you need to have for your co-actor because we all are here to perform. And with Nawaz bhai, I also understood that control is important — that you are always an actor performing your character. It’s not the other way round.”
As far as her career goes, Tripathi emphasises, “There’s so much to do…. All the things that I cannot do in real life, I want to do on screen.”