Taking on Shefali Shah’s tough-as-nails top cop Vartika Chaturvedi, Huma Qureshi stars as the antagonist in Season 3 of Delhi Crime. The much-loved International Emmy-winning series — that picks a new real-life case every season and compellingly dramatises it — returns on November 13 on Netflix, marking the latest in a purple patch for Huma whose central turn in the fourth season of her web series Maharani (that released last Friday) has been unanimously lauded, with her upcoming film Bayaan taking her to the Toronto International Film Festival two months ago. A t2 chat with Huma.
You had a theatrical release in the form of Single Salma in the last week of October, the fourth season of Maharani has just opened to unanimously positive reviews, and you make your entry into Delhi Crime as the primary antagonist of Season 3 this Thursday. It is definitely a happy space to be in, but is it also a tad overwhelming given that so much is happening back to back?
Let’s call it the ‘Huma Qureshi Film Festival!’ (Laughs) And festivals are always a cause for celebration and happiness. Of course, there is a lot of running around, logistics, interviews and a million other things that I am trying to make time for. But it is definitely a very, very exciting time. I couldn’t have asked for a better week. Maharani (S4) has released to great reviews... so many messages have been sent to me by fans saying they binge-watched the entire season in one night! And then, of course, to get to play ‘Badi Didi’ in Delhi Crime 3 and sink my teeth into such a juicy, dark, delicious character has been a high. This is a character that is starkly opposite to Rani Bharti (in Maharani)... if Rani is the white knight, then Badi Didi is the dark queen. As an actor, to be able to straddle both these worlds has been phenomenal. I feel a lot of gratitude and joy that I am being able to put out this wide array of work.
You have said on record that this is the darkest character you have ever played. What was your first reaction when you were approached for the part?
I was very excited when I got the call for Delhi Crime. I asked them: ‘Am I playing a cop?’ But Tanuj (Chopra, director) and Apoorva (Bakshi, producer) were like: ‘Not really, but in a parallel world perhaps you could be!’ (Laughs) They said that they were looking at this character as being a worthy adversary to Madam Sir (Vartika Chaturvedi, played by Shefali Shah).
I loved the writing, I loved my character. It is something that I had never done before. My only rule for myself in this new phase of life is that I should not repeat myself. So whenever I feel I am getting monotonous or playing similar kind of parts, I take a step back and ask myself: ‘Okay, what can you now do which is different and that is not expected from you?’ The last few years have been heavy for me in terms of positive characters — whether it was in Maharani or in Tarla — and playing Badi Didi in Delhi Crime 3 came at the right time. It helped me tap into a new side of myself as an actor. OTT platforms have always been a space in which one can experiment and also have fun with your parts. Ever since the trailer of this season dropped, my phone is full of messages saying: ‘Oh my God, who is this scary psycho person and we can’t wait to see more!’
Apart from the obvious things like learning a new dialect and changing your body language for this character, what kind of effort went into slipping into the psyche of a person who seemingly has no redeeming qualities?
In terms of the dialect, we really wanted to make sure this character sounded like somebody who belonged to the soil in which her character is rooted. We wanted to narrow that aspect down geographically because a lot of the story takes place in Rohtak, and the Haryanvi dialect came in from there. A lot of prep went into not just getting the accent right but also because the script was originally in a mix of Hindi and English, we needed to figure out how best to colloquially adapt it to my character’s way of speaking.
A few of those things organically seeped into her vocabulary in terms of certain jumla (slogan), muhawra (idiom) or poetry that were not in the original script and which actually end up making her more interesting. My accent teacher Sandeep Goyat really helped me with that... in zeroing in on certain phrases that would convey a meaning completely instead of going in for longish paragraphs. That helped elevate the character a lot.
Physicality wise, I went for a little scar on the lip without getting into the details of why and when she got it. That speaks subtly about the fact that she has witnessed a life of violence, she could have seen a life of hardships... maybe the scar was something she got when she was in a knife fight or was hit badly by someone, but we don’t commit to it (the reason) in the show. But seeing Meena Chaudhary (aka Badi Didi), you do know that she has seen a lot of crime from a very young age and that has perhaps desensitised her to this world and to its violence.
There was a lot of work put into the smallest details... like how she dresses, how she speaks. In her head, she feels she is just another businesswoman and that it (human trafficking) is not different from any other trade. She operates in a clinical fashion which is very, very jarring because when you see the gruesomeness of what this does to people, it scares you. The clinical approach she operates with makes her even more menacing.
Despite who she is, was it necessary for you to be able to react to her empathetically in some way so that you could play her better?
Actors have to be empaths... it is inherent in the nature of the job that we do. You may be playing any character — good, bad, dark, ugly — but as an actor, you have to understand the world of that particular character in order to be able to portray them authentically. It was important for me to approach this character with zero judgment. Huma may feel a certain way and do things in a particular manner, but I had to keep all that aside and look at Badi Didi like any other person, one who has her own rules and has worked a certain way and Huma is nobody to judge her.
As actors, we also have the responsibility to shine a light on the darker aspects of human psychology and of society. That is a massive responsibility and if I am going to skim the surface, then the impact of what this show is trying to talk about would be mitigated. When you play an evil character, there may sometimes be the tendency to relish in the darkness a little bit. But we had to tread that fine line between making her sinister, making her larger-than-life, making her a worthy adversary to Madam Sir, but also, at the same time, to try and understand her psyche.
But you can’t romanticise or glamourise such a person. In an interview just before the release of Django Unchained, Leonardo DiCaprio spoke about shooting a scene which left him unsettled. He, of course, plays a white plantation owner in that film and in one scene, he had to spit on the face of his Black colleague. That really disturbed him and he said that as a human being, he could never think of doing that to another person, and that too in a film which was a commentary on slavery. But for the larger purpose of the film, one has to sometimes do that in order to make people understand the horror of what it is. That responsibility lies on us as actors and for that, you have to compartmentalise and say: ‘Okay, this is not me. This is this person and these are her rules and I cannot bring my morality or judgment into this.’
Since you spoke about responsibility, where does it come in more for you as an actor — headlining a show like Maharani for four seasons and trying to deliver the same quality every time or stepping into the third season of a prestige project like Delhi Crime and knowing that there are enormous expectations from not only the original cast, but also from you?
Doing both is a privilege and never a burden. They are both gifts and I look at everything that I do as a golden opportunity because you don’t know what it is going to convert into. Every time I walk out on a set, I am aware that it is a privilege and a joy to do this because there are thousands of people who would possibly give their right arm to be where I am. So, I have that responsibility towards myself and towards my audiences that I am going to try and entertain them and do something different every time. It doesn’t matter whether I am headlining a show which is in its fourth season or if I am a new entrant in a very well-established franchise; it doesn’t matter if I am working with a first-time director or with a massive star... all I have to think about is doing the best that I can in that moment.
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