(Spoilers ahead about a crucial plot point in Veere Di Wedding.)
Who is more controversial – the actress Swara Bhasker or Sakshi Soni, the free-thinking and expletives-spouting character she plays in Shashanka Ghosh’s Veere Di Wedding? The choice is tough.
Bhaskar has been regularly attacked by online trolls for her political views. Ahead of the June 1 release of Veere Di Wedding, produced by Rhea Kapoor and Ekta Kapoor, some offended Twitter users urged people to boycott the comedy because it featured Bhasker. The outrage continued after the release of the movie, which stars Bhasker alongside Kareena Kapoor, Sonam K Ahuja and Shikha Talsania. The film tells the story of the friendship between four women, each of whom is at a different juncture with respect to the institution of marriage. Bhasker’s character is in the throes of a divorce that is precipitated after Sakshi’s husband catches her masturbating.
The moment has been praised as well as criticised for its boldness. Some Twitter users detected a pattern that suggested that bots were at work behind the tweets posted by people who claimed to have been offended by the scene. The campaign does not seem to have worked: the movie had earned an estimated Rs 46 crores between Friday and Tuesday. Excerpts from an interview with Swara Bhasker, whose credits include the Tanu Weds Manu films and Nil Battey Sannata.
Have you started to feel that viewers are not able to separate your politics from your craft? Is the outrage caused by your views casting a shadow over the responses to your performances?
Well, I don’t know. Maybe it is. But I suppose it is not only me. We are now a country that does not know how to tolerate opinions, especially if it is an opinion that is different from your own. I think that’s a problem every public figure will have to face. I keep going back to the case of Baahubali’s Sathyaraj, who had to apologise for something he said ten years ago ahead of the film’s release.
I’m a lot more vocal, and I don’t seem to stop. I seem to keep saying things, giving my opinion or whatever that seems to be angering people. I don’t know what to do about that, frankly. I don’t respond to things because I’m an actor. I respond to things because I’m a citizen. I think it is the job of all of us citizens to participate in a responsible manner in public discourse because that shapes public opinion, which in turn shapes policy. If there hadn’t been such a massive outrage to the Kathua and Unnao cases, these cases would not have even moved forward. I think we do bear that responsibility, and I make my comments in that light.
But I do have to say that Veere Di Wedding reassures me a lot because despite the hateful, bigoted calls to boycott the film because I had initiated that placard campaign [in protest to the Unnao and Kathua incidents], people turned up in huge numbers to watch the film. I’m so happy to see these numbers. I guess people do not judge you for your political opinions after all.
Would you have picked Sakshi Soni if you had to choose between the four characters?
When Rhea [Kapoor], Mehul and Nidhi narrated the script to me, they were actually offering me Meera’s role [played by Shikha Talsania]. I read that role and I felt that the character is a little similar to what I had done in Tanu Weds Manu Returns, where I’d already played a mother. I felt that I didn’t want to carry another baby around the sets. So I actually asked for Sakshi’s role because I thought it is a character I’ve not done before.
Did growing up in Delhi help in preparing for the role?
There’s a certain swag, a certain quality to Sakshi’s language and a certain bluntness to her which I think is very Delhi. Of course, Sakshi represents a very uber-rich part of Delhi, which is not at all where I came from. My parents were middle-class government servants. My mother is a professor, my father was in the Navy. So, in that sense, I’ve had a privileged upbringing, but a very comfortable government servant-kind of upbringing. It isn’t this crazy money that Sakshi represents.
That said, culturally, the fact that she also comes from a big city and an English-speaking background – that helps you decode the character right in the beginning. And then you build into it. I decided that I didn’t want Sakshi to be a cardboard cut-out of this rich bitch. There is a very human and a very endearing quality to Sakshi. She’s not a bad person. She’s just this entitled, snobbish person, but there’s a lovableness to her because of her madness. She’s very fond of her friends – she’ll use her father’s credit card not just to solve her own problems but those of her friends as well. That’s kind of sweet.
I also think the language she uses makes her very relatable – however fancy she may be, wearing rich clothes or whatever, the moment she opens her mouth, it is the Delhi street that’s talking. That I think saves Sakshi from being very unlikable.
How challenging was it to perform the masturbation scene? How did you prepare for it?
There’s nothing to prepare, other than be aware of the fact that women can pleasure themselves and that it is okay and normal adult behaviour.
The thing with all such scenes, whether it is an intimate love-making or a masturbation scene, is that you have to trust the makers. I read the script and I really just trusted the intentions of Rhea [Kapoor] and Shashanka [Ghosh] and the writers. The only thing I told Shashanka was, let’s keep it on the comic side because I knew that it was a shocking scene. I knew people are going to take some time to even understand how they should respond to it.