I’ll watch Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman once again. It was so overwhelming!” says Sudipta Chakraborty, sipping tea in her fourth floor apartment off Golpark. The actress, who has floored critics and audiences with her act in Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Bunohaans, Anindya Chattopadhyay’s Open Tee Bioscope and Utsav Mukherjee’s Bheetu, just got home from a talk show. With her marriage anniversary round the corner, Sudipta looks pretty content. 
A t2 chat...

You are quite the film buff. What’s the last Bollywood film you liked?
Sriram Raghavan’s Badlapur. I loved it. Varun Dhawan has delivered such a fantastic performance. The film hooks you from the first scene. You know, Sriram is a good friend of mine. We meet up whenever I’m in Bombay. He came for the Bombay screening of Bunohaans and the next day he told me, ‘You are the strongest performer in the film.’ In fact, Sriram had directed me in a Hindi serial called Cell 3 in Calcutta almost 20 years ago. I played Pankaj Kapur’s daughter. 

What do you remember of that shoot?
I just remember that Pankaj was speaking in such a low voice that I couldn’t hear a single word, and in turn I couldn’t say my lines (laughs)!  

Have you told Sriram that you liked Badlapur?
No. Maybe I should… but I score zero in PR. I know people in Bollywood but I just can’t tell them to cast me in their films. In fact I have never told Dibakar Banerjee (her uncle) to keep me in mind for his films. 

Will you watch his Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! on April 3?
I have already seen the rough cut on his laptop in Bombay(smiles).  Swastika Mukherjee rocks as Anguri Devi!

Your character Rohini in Utsav Mukherjee’s Bheetu is wheelchair-bound. What was the toughest part to portray?
To crawl up two flights of stairs in the climax. And we shot that for a long time. It was quite a struggle. 

Even after a shot was taken, when the assistant directors came to help me up on my feet, I would insist that I lay there on the stairs. I wanted to feel helpless. That’s why I didn’t take help from anyone. With each passing day, I started to understand how helpless people in wheelchairs are. The whole film took a lot out of me. 

Going through so much trouble for a shoot... are you a perfectionist?
I was portraying a difficult emotion and I didn’t want to get out of it suddenly. I didn’t want to break that emotion since it doesn’t happen to us on a daily basis. It would have been difficult for me to capture that again. I don’t want to look fake on camera. 

How do you deal with emotionally draining scenes? How do you get out of that headspace?
It takes some time. And it was a little more tough while shooting for Bheetu. If you ask me why I take on such challenging roles, I would say that’s the takeback. You get to live so many lives in one lifetime. 

Do you look out for characters with complicated emotional graphs? 
It’s not that I get 100 offers and I pick four from them. My career hasn’t unfolded in such a manner. I take spontaneous decisions. In Mainak Bhaumik’s Chalachitra Circus, I play a wannabe actress who hangs out in the studio para asking for work. Mainak told me, ‘Let’s break this sad image of yours with this film.’ 

Are you getting typecast?
Yes. That has always happened with me. There was a time post-Bariwali when I was being offered only roles of domestic helps. And I started saying no to them. Maybe a few people (in the industry) didn’t like that I was refusing roles. I didn’t want to repeat myself. 

Have you started getting more offers after Bunohaans and Open Tee Bioscope?
Mainstream producers and directors are offering me more roles now. But then, even if some of the roles are good, the pay isn’t. It’s a catch-22 situation. Earlier I would refuse roles. But then I didn’t gain much from that and the roles went to other actors. These days I am accepting more roles, I don’t want to repeat mistakes. 

You got married in May last year. Do you feel more settled now?
Yes, now I can totally focus on my work. In the three-four years before marriage I couldn’t concentrate. Lots of things were going on in my head. It was very taxing. A certain amount of uncertainty regarding my personal life was eating me up.

Does your husband watch your films?
Yes, he (Abhishek Saha) loved Open Tee Bioscope. We met last year and before that he was completely clueless about my films and me (laughs). He says that he had watched Bariwali, but I’m not too sure (laughs). He is Birsa’s (Dasgupta) friend from Bombay and knew me as Bidipta’s (Chakraborty) sister. We met on a trip to Tumling that I had gone with my family members including my sister and Birsa. He had also come down. Abhishek is the silent sort; we only exchanged pleasantries and had adda in the group. We returned to Calcutta on April 7, Abhishek and I had a proper chat on April 8 for two hours. On April 9, he proposed marriage; he said, ‘Let’s settle down’ and we got married on May 14. 

What made you say yes?
I just went by my instinct. I didn’t even know his surname. On April 8, I got to know his surname and what he does for a living (Abhishek is with STAR Jalsha Movies). He had proposed marriage and maybe I was just dying to hear something like that. Being a no-nonsense guy, he straightaway came to the point.

On the work front, are you going through the best phase of your career?
It’s all about the timing, I guess. A clutch of good films came out at the right time, and a lot of people are watching them. I’m more busy now. 

Any career plans?
I’ve stopped planning after marriage. I had no plans of getting married. But it happened. Things will happen when they are meant to be. I never thought of getting married to somebody I didn’t even know. I’m taking life as it comes. I have always done my work sincerely, maybe it wasn’t noticed before. 

Any changes you would like to see in the industry?
Original stories and equal pay for women.

SUDIPTA ON NINE FILMMAKERS WHO HAVE DIRECTED HER

Rituparno Ghosh: His sense of detailing and his writing. I still think he was a far better screenwriter than a director.
Aparna Sen: Her sincerity, sensitivity and sensibility.
Buddhadeb Dasgupta: His sense of framing and the poetry he conjures on celluloid.  
Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury: I loved his simplicity. Bunohaans is the turning point in my career. I’m indebted to Tonyda and Indranidi. 
Anindya Chattopadhyay: I loved his honesty to his job. He was very sure of what he wanted from the actors. He got what he wanted very quietly and calmly. 
Srijit Mukherji: I love his passion. He is too passionate a filmmaker. I adore his perseverance to get the shot he has in mind. 
Kaushik Ganguly: He works at ease. There’s no tension in the unit. 
Kamaleswar Mukherjee: His focus on pre-production.
Sandip Ray: The hospitality of his team. The unit knows how to pamper the actors.

Arindam Chatterjee
Which film do you think is Sudipta’s best work till now? 
Tell t2@abp.in