You told me when that you had made a playlist with Meena Kumari’s songs and her poetry to find the pathos of this character. But do you also create a backstory? How did you create Lajjo?
I have a whole process for it, and I’ve done it from my very first character till now. I think about how she grew up because that is foundational. Does she have good parents? Did she go to an English medium school or a Hindi medium school? How educated is she? In this case, what kind of abandonment issues does she suffer from? Why has she taken to the bottle? Does she feel scared? Basically, if you read the script properly — however bad the script or however good the script is — it gives you a lot of clues into the person. For instance,Lajjo was sold at the age of six by her aunty into the kotha (brothel). That means that she starts to get trained in music and dance at that age. That means she’s proficient in that. So now, that is a nugget of information I have to remember as I’m having a breakdown in real-time, that even though she is dancing and completely destroying herself and feeling humiliated in the moment, the movement cannot look inaccurate. … It’s muscle memory. It’s like driving a car when you’re really upset. If you’re crying, you’re not going to forget to shift a gear or press the brake just because you’re crying, because that becomes second nature. I will find that the footwork has to be on point, even if she’s having a breakdown. And the other thing is understanding the psychology of the person. What does it mean to be sold off at the age of six? It is possible that when she became a teenager at 14 or 16, that her virginity was auctioned or whatever they say, “nath utrai” is the term. These things have happened to her. How does that feel? … At which point does the lie become the truth? Those things are very important for me to build the character. It’s not about how much time you spend — for me it’s not about being on the show for the whole thing. It’s to find what leaves the most impact. … People are like, “Oh, Richa’s here now she’s gonna shoot someone with a gun.” That’s not surprising. If you see me enter a party drunk and do a crazy dance, that’s surprising. That was my greed.
You’re making a conscious effort to not get pigeonholed into the “brave” and “bold” woman character.
To be fair, I have played these parts also, and very consciously. I played a sexual harassment public prosecutor in Section 375 (2019), then Madam Chief Minister (2021) is about a Dalit woman trying to get into mainstream politics by hook or by crook, and it becomes a character study. Even a commercial show like Inside Edge is about a woman trying to find her place in a man’s world. So there’s a lot of feminism, a lot of gender politics, a lot of social stuff, like with films like Masaan (2015)…That perception is there. And to be fair, I enjoy it. Because I feel like an actor should also have a brain and make little little contributions (to society) in that sense.
But when Sanjay Leela Bhansali calls you and you’re like, this guy will do unrequited love, song and dance and everything in the best way. If I have to do it somewhere, I better do it with him.