Mona Wasu. She looks fresh and bubbly in the Star Plus serial, Miilee. With her TV debut four primetime heroines ? Dr Juhi (Gurdeep Kohli) of Sanjivani, Pammi (Sangeeta Ghosh) of Des Mein Nikla Hoga Chand, Flight-Lieutenant Monica (Sai Deodhar) of Saara Aakash and Karishma (Pallavi Kulkarni) of Kehta Hai Dil were relegated to the background.

Mona Wasu was touted as the next big thing and she has lived up to the expectations. The show has a decent viewership and in a few months Mona has acquired her own fan following. Mona never thought she would end up doing a serial. “Initially, I was not very interested in a daily. I did not want to be typecast. But then I liked the concept of Miilee. It gave me the chance to portray a variety of emotions,” she says. And along with stardom and hectic working hours, romance and link-ups are also very much a part of a TV star’s life.

Rajiv Paul-Delnaaz, Shakti Anand-Sai Deodhar, Varun Bodola-Rajeshwari Sachdev and Mihir Mishra-Manini De, all fell in love and eventually tied the knot. There have been romances ending on a bitter note like that of Shweta Tiwari and Cezanne Khan (of Kasautii Zindagii Kay fame) and Varun Badola and Manini De (before they got married to their respective partners). Cezanne also has the unique record of allegedly seeing three of his leading ladies one after the other ? Shweta Tiwari, Urvashi Dholakia and Geetanjali Tikekar. There are also a couple of young and cute pairs like Gurpreet Kohli and Arjun Punj and there are others like Suvarna Jha who recently denied a fling with costar Amit Tandon on the sets of Kaisa Yeh Pyaar Hai.

Mona Wasu is one gutsy TV actress who speaks her mind. Though we have quite an amazing number of sharp-tongued, bold and beautiful actresses on TV nowadays, ready to go to any extent to snatch the small-screen crown, most would think twice before saying anything against the soap queen Ektaa Kapoor and her production company, Balaji Telefilms. Possibly they all know where the honey lies. But this bold beauty shoots straight from the hip and this is what she has to say about the sacred Balaji Telefilms and its serials: “I’m not looking for the kind of fame that Balaji brings.” Reason: “The scripts are not exciting at all.” And she doesn’t stop at that. “The audience that watches Balaji serials is a very regular and mediocre audience. I don’t want to be liked by that kind of audience.” Miillee or meeeeow?

Mona faced a similar situation not very long ago. Some time back her scene with costar Ajay Gehi was the hot thing on the lips everywhere. It was reported that Mona and costar Ajay (who had starred in Maqbool earlier) were “very friendly” on the sets. It gave more fodder to the gossipmongers because Ajay happened to be happily married. And both Ajay and Mona stuck to the denial mode. When we asked her about it, she said, “Ajay is a very good friend. We get along well. I don’t know where the link-up thing came from. It’s like a big joke. Maybe it was because of some communication gap, some misunderstanding (she means the media here). But we both laughed it off. It does not matter when you know what you actually are.” Whatever it was (the pair would know better) the publicity that followed definitely made them a hot pair.

Link-up or no link-up, Mona Wasu who comes from a totally non-filmy background has actually achieved a good deal already. “My parents are thrilled. But I believe I have a long way to go. People just know me as Miilee. They still have to know Mona the actress,” she says with quiet determination.