Adah Sharma was mistaken for foreigner early in her career, but never clarified: 'They thought I didn't know Hindi'
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Adah Sharma has had a solid run of form professionally in the last two years. With The Kerala Story, she gave the highest-grossing Hindi film led by a woman, and followed it up with a hard-hitting performance in Bastar. In between she played a 'quirky seductress' on Sunflower. Now, the actor is utilising her acting chops to play 10 different roles in her next show Reeta Sanyal. In an exclusive conversation with Hindustan Times, Adah talks about the fun challenge, never being typecast, and more.
Adah Sharma on Reeta Sanyal
Anyone who follows her on social media knows that Adah is big on mimicry and accents. In Reeta Sanyal, the actor gets a chance to use these skills as she plays a lawyer who moonlights as a detective, adopting various disguises. "It's like somebody thought that let's let her misbehave legally on the show," she says with a laugh. “And I can't tell you how lucky I feel as an actor or as a person. I love doing accents, mimicking people, and I got to do all of that on the show as different 10 different people.”
Adah says that while she has tried her hand at accents in her other roles, this one was more over-the-top, "I used to do a little bit of with each character, of course, in movies. I try different accents, whether it's Bhavna Reddy in Commando or Shalini in The Kerala Story. But this is like out and out in a very, larger than life, extremely masala genre," she explains.
Ask her how she did not allow the larger-than-lfe to get away from her and she promptly says, "It's fun, it's funny, but it's not gimmicky. I play every character with full honesty, and I think if you just keep it honest, it's never going to go wrong. Sometimes over the top might be good because the person you are playing is over the top person, so then you have to be over the top. But instead of thinking over of thinking over the top, under, I just believe at that time I am this person, and play it with full honesty."
Reeta Sanyal is a masala show with a blend of comedy, suspense, and action. Adah agrees that the genre had been dominated by male actors till very recently but points out that there have been trailblazing female actors who have broken the glass ceiling before. "There was Chalbaaz so many years back (starring Sridevi). Other movies like Chandni or Seeta Aur Geeta all came out years back."
She believes that strong female characters are essential for films to have longer shelf life. "I still feel that any movie does really well or is very well remembered, if the women characters are well written or connect with you. It can be a male centric movie, but if the woman characters are not strong, you will forget about it," she says.
When people mistook her for a foreigner
Adah calls herself fortunte that she never got typecast and has had the opportunity to dabble in different genres and play a wide variety of roles. In fact, the only time she recalls being put in a box was right after her debut film - 1920. "People, thought that I was a foreigner," Adah recalls with a chuckle "I was wearing the blue lenses, and I looked really pale. There was no sun. We were not tanned at all in London. There the cold, so I look white with blue eyes, and people believes that I'm a foreigner, and they thought I didn't know Hindi." Adah said this misconception stuck for the longest time because she couldn't clarify. "I'm someone who is very bad at clarifying. Also, there was no social media, I was not on Instagram, so no one really knew."
Reeta Sanyal, Adah's new show, is a 'pulp investigative comedy' that also stars Ankur Rathee and Rahul Dev. The show will premiere on Disney+ Hotstar on October 14.
