Smriti Irani

She continues to be one of the star campaigners for the BJP but that hasn’t stopped Smriti Irani from planning a new innings on television. After quite a prolonged break, the mother of all mothers, Kyunki’s Tulsi, will now be seen in a comedy on the small screen. Maniben.com on Sab TV is, in fact, an adaptation of one of her popular stage plays. t2 spoke to Smriti about her new telly avatar.

What is Maniben.com all about?

I can’t get into the details of the show yet as we are still a little away from the launch. All I will say is that it has been my first and one of my most successful Gujarati plays. We are doing the television translation for Sab TV. It is for the first time that a Gujarati play in totality has been adapted into a full-length Hindi TV serial.

Why this switch from a drama queen to a comic actress?

It’s ironical, I began with a comedy when I was discovered by Shobha Kapoor and I was later taken on as Tulsi. While I was doing Kyunki... for STAR Plus, I was doing Hum Hai Kal Aaj Kal Aur Kal for Doordarshan, which was a comedy. So I have done my little bit and I guess, I am back to the same flavour.

Is the approach any different when you are doing a fun role?

No, I guess, you have to be more open to new ideas. You have to be open to more challenges and also new concepts and ways of doing things. Comedy is very unlike the kind of melodrama I have done on television. For Maniben.com I do so many more rehearsals going in... to check timing, to see whether the humour underplays correctly. There is also an underlining humane factor in the show. We are not doing humour for the sake of humour... there is a very Hrishikesh Mukherjee feel to it.

What changes are you bringing to the play to adapt it for television?

We had to tone it down, of course. That is definitely a part of it. The play is restricted to two hours and it’s just one plot. But in television, you need to find new plots to have the show on air every day. Also, the star cast is magnified. The beauty of Maniben.com the play was that it wasn’t preachy, yet it had a message. It was made for family viewing. It is very topical, very current... we would take up those issues and then play around them in fictional stories.

So, is it like Office Office’s format of a new social issue being tackled in every episode?

No, we haven’t done any such division, yet. We are basically flowing with the story. It’s primarily the story of a family and what happens around that family. It’s not a definite set-up of one-episode-one-story. People will not find a disconnect between what’s happening around them and what’s happening around the show.

When does Maniben.com go on air?

I am hopeful that it will go on air some time in June after the IPL and the elections.