An acting part for you after a long time. Did you enjoy working on Chotushkone?

It was a lot of fun! Like a picnic with friends. Goutam Ghose is a long-time friend of mine. So is Sudeep (Chatterjee) the director of photography, whom we call Pupu. Both Pupu and Goutam have worked with me as DoP before. Srijit and Param (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) are also friends though they are much younger than I. And all of us are actually directors. Param and I got on exceptionally well, which resulted in our on-screen chemistry also being pretty good. Ritu (Rituparno Ghosh) was supposed to play this role. I missed him so much! Kintu Param khub bhalo korlo. He is like a younger brother... though he calls me Rina mashi, sometimes lapsing into Rinadi.

What I particularly liked was the idea of playing a director in a movie. I had never played one before, although I was supposed to, in a comedy planned by Anjan (Dutt). In fact, my father (late Chidananda Dasgupta) used to tease me that in a working still from one of my earlier films where I was looking through the camera, I looked like an actress playing a director rather than an actual one! In Chotushkone, all of us play directors who were/are also actors — all except Goutam (Ghose) who is a director and a cameraman in the film. So, in a certain sense, Srijit intended us to play our real-life characters. And the names of our characters, too, hark back to our real names. Thus Goutam is Shakya, Dipak (Chiranjit) is Dipto, Parambrata is Jayabrata and I am Trina (Rina). When I told Srijit that when Param calls me Trinadi, it sounds exactly like Rinadi, he laughed and said, “That’s the whole point!”

So Srijit capitalised on your real-life personas?

Actually, what he did was quite clever! He used elements from our films throughout in Chotushkone — in the conversation, in the decor. For instance, in my track there’s a scene between a teacher and her students and the teacher is called Vijaylakshmi Iyer, drawing from both Violet Stoneham in 36 Chowringhee Lane and Meenakshi Iyer in Mr and Mrs Iyer.

Then the audience has a guessing game to play!

Srijit’s films always have in-jokes. He is one of those incurable punsters!

Does Chotushkone become an extension of you all?

Yes and no. You will know when you see it. I am a director who also used to be an actress. Trina is a bit discriminating about the kind of films she makes, which is a lot like me as a director. Srijit also wanted Trina to dress and behave like me. Somehow, both he and Pupu think of me as a diva. I can’t imagine why, because I don’t act like one in real life! So Trina, too, is a kind of diva in the film. But her personal history is not my personal history. Just as Mrinalini in Iti Mrinalini was like me, but her personal history was not mine. So Trina is supposed to remind the audience of me, but have a different personal history.

It was the same with Goutam; his character’s mannerisms are similar to his own, but again Shakya’s personal history is not Goutam’s personal history. Srijit has also created a history of intra-personal relationships between these four directors, which informs the way the story develops. It’s a very interesting gimmick. But, apart from that history, he wanted most of us to behave like ourselves. To that end, he allowed a lot of ad-libbing. We had written dialogue of course, but we could construct our lines our way as long as it didn’t interfere with Srijit’s vision.

Aparna feels her chemistry with Parambrata in Chotushkone is “pretty good”

Which is where your and Parambrata’s chemistry scored?

(Smiles) Srijit certainly thinks so! I think our style of acting is also rather similar.

Did you all get competitive?

Not at all! We had too much fun... chatting and laughing the whole time. We hardly ever went to our make-up rooms between shots!

What motivates you to take up a role these days?

Normally nothing, except having fun with friends, like in Tony’s (Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury) Antaheen. But in this case, Srijit toh chharchhiloee na! Besides where would he get another female director with a considerable body of work? If I didn’t act in the film, it couldn’t have been made!

What happens to your director self when you act in other people’s films?

I can’t completely rule out my director self but I don’t impose it either.

Do you have any film in mind where you will have an acting part?

No.... Only if I don’t find anyone to cast in a role, like in Paromitar Ekdin. I am not keen on it because I don’t get the benefit of my own supervision. I had asked Srijit why in Chotushkone he wasn’t playing Param’s role himself. He said, “No Rinadi, it’s very difficult.” I can understand that. It was very difficult for me to play Mrinalini while directing the film. Generally, I don’t like acting in my own films. But playing Trina was easy. Firstly, it was someone else’s film. Also, it came from within.

Tell us about the small film you made recently...

It wasn’t that small finally. The duration’s about 80 minutes. So it’s a full-length feature. It’s called Saari Raat and made for Zindagi under Zee TV. The channel wanted six Indian directors and six Pakistani directors to make a film each, for an Indo-Pakistan film festival. I was supposed to do a telefilm on Badal Sircar’s famous play Sara Rattir way back in 1998. Javed Akhtar had translated the poems in it, and Ashok Singh had translated the dialogue from Bangla to Hindi. I revisited that idea and edited it down. It has been presented on screen as a play in three acts, and as a tribute to Badalda who passed away in 2011. The action takes place in one room among three characters, which are played by Anjan Dutt, Ritwick Chakraborty and Konkona (Sensharma).

You were also working on a script based on Romeo and Juliet. Is it still on?

Yes, it’s a musical called Aarshinagar, set in the contemporary period.

Is it like Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo+Juliet?

No, not at all. It is not really like any film I have seen. The whole film is in verse. I got the idea when I did a part of the dialogue in Goynar Baksho in Bangla verse. Srijato has written the verse for Aarshinagar. I had written the script long ago for Hema Malini. She had asked me to write a script to launch her younger daughter Ahana. Kunal Basu helped me with the adaptation of the story, which I have used. Not entirely perhaps, but I’ve taken a good many elements from it.... It will be something new that I hope people will like.