‘Pleasing everyone does not really get you an Oscar’: Shefali Shah

Interview/ Shefali Shah, actor

Shefali Shah has spent years portraying characters that are complicated, contradictory and unapologetically human. In The Audacity of Being, her ‘sort-of memoir’, she turns that same unflinching gaze on herself. Forget the conventional memoir with its chronological march, Shah’s book begins with hair, Spanx and beauty standards, instantly striking a chord with the reader. When I sit down to interview her, I tell her that, like her, “I, too, was born with a bad hair day”. She is as effortlessly hilarious as she is candid about her life, insecurities and choices.

“There were a couple of things I was very clear about,” she tells THE WEEK about writing the book. “I did not want it in chronological order. It had to be an easy read. It had to have humour. It could not have a moral-of-the-story. No gyaan. I do not know myself what gyaan I would give. And it had to be honest.”

Edited excerpts from the interview:

Q/ You begin with hair, Spanx and beauty standards. Why did that feel like the right place to start the book?

A/ I was very clear that I did not want the book to read like a biography or a conventional memoir, and told chronologically. It would have been very boring to start with, “Once upon a time, I was born here….” The credit for choosing this as the first chapter goes to my editor Chirag Thakkar. I thought it was a stroke of genius. It is funny, it is wicked and it immediately tells you what you are getting into when you read the book. I was not even convinced about writing a memoir in the first place. But the publishers were like, “You should do it.” So I agreed. Hence, it is a ‘sort-of memoir’.

Q/ It is so honest, and you are so candid about your insecurities. What do you now know about yourself that you wish the younger Shefali had known?

A/ One is that pleasing everyone does not really get you an Oscar. It is seriously overrated. And caring for others does not have to be at your cost. We have been taught that when you sacrifice, you are a giver. But why do I have to sacrifice when I can just share? And self-preservation. And I should have been ambitious, but it is okay.

Q/ If not ambition, what drove you as an actor?

A/ There was no drive or goal. I never approached anyone for work. I did not have a manager. I thought it was beneath my dignity to ask for work, which was stupid. So I just kept doing whatever came my way.

The only thing is, I was never disillusioned during those patches when I was just waiting. Even when I was, something would suddenly come along, a very special project that brought a lot of respect and appreciation. And then, of course, there would be another patch with no work. I would get offers, but nothing that really pulled me towards it. Take, for instance, Delhi Crime, or Monsoon Wedding, Satya–all became cult favourites. Then you do something like Jalsa or Darlings, and Three of Us, and that appreciation keeps you going. It reminds you that even if you are not getting the work you want right now, something as beautiful as what you have done before will come along again.

Q/ Is there any ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a character or film that you regret?

A/ ‘Yes’–maybe. But I do not think those choices have made a difference to my life. Could I have avoided those roles? Absolutely. I do not regret saying no to any films. But I regret missing out on two, because I was committed to other projects. One was The Namesake, for which I was committed to Gandhi, My Father. The other was Talvar, when I was doing Dil Dhadakne Do.

Q/ It is written about quite extensively how OTT has especially created space for layered female characters who are flawed, angry, morally ambiguous and, so to say, difficult. But has the industry developed its own formula for the supposedly complex female character, where rage itself becomes a shorthand for agency? Are we seeing genuine complexity, or just a different kind of stereotype?

A/ It depends on how the character is played and how the director and actor envision it. Some directors and actors feel that you do not have to scream to make yourself heard. Shamshu (in Darlings), for instance, had a lot of room to play with. She never became bitter about what happened to her, but she was full of rage against this man. She wanted to kill him. Yet that rage came out through humour. There are no explosive outbursts.

Take Delhi Crime 3, for example. I was not sure if it would land because, for once, Vartika was not heroic. There was no bravado. She was exhausted. All she had to do was find those girls. That was it. When you see her in Delhi Crime 1, there is a certain fire in her. In the third season, that fire has not disappeared; it just manifests differently. It is about, ‘This is important. I have to do this. I will do this.’ Of course, she feels rage. But how does she choose to express that rage? That is the question.

There are wonderful stories being told, and do we want more? Of course. But is screaming, shouting, anger and rage the only way to portray a strong woman? Is that what she has to do? No.

Q/ You write about what you describe as a frozen childhood, as well as therapy and your first marriage. When you revisit these experiences, are you writing about them from the perspective of the person who lived through them or the person who has since made sense of them? Did you also make sense of certain things and experiences while writing? Were there any parts that were especially difficult to revisit?

A/ It was not like writing this gave me a new vision of my life. This was my life and I was revisiting it. It is like when you are going through an album and you remember how you felt and what you were going through. You remember the smell of that place, and who was sitting where. And then I am narrating it to you, it is that. But about the difficult parts of it, it was like, yeah, it is done. How many years will you keep crying about the same thing? I did not even want to tell it all. It turned out to be so honest, and thankfully, it was not preachy.

THE AUDACITY OF BEING: A SORT OF MEMOIR

Author Shefali Shah

Published by Bloomsbury India

Pages 224; price Rs364