Support System

Characters apart from the protagonists are now getting due importance because of meaningful scripts, the digital revolution and an evolving audience

- KUNAL PURANDARE

In July 2017, Neena Gupta created a flutter on the internet by posting her photograph on Instagram with the caption: “I live in Mumbai and working as a good actor looking for good parts to play [sic].” It was an unusual post, considering she has over three decades of acting experience and that it’s a rarity for an actor to seek work publicly, especially on a social media platform. Gupta’s daughter, fashion designer Masaba, reposted it immediately and wrote that among other things, her 62-year-old National Award-winning mother told her that they don’t write parts for women her age anymore. Actor Priyanka Chopra left a one-word comment: “Inspired”.

“It was not an act of bravery, but an act of frustration because the media had created an image of mine where I was supposed to be living in Delhi and not working,” says Gupta of the post. Reality hit her hard when she went to filmmaker Zoya Akhtar’s office in connection with a part in Made in Heaven, a web series, and her assistant asked her when she had relocated to Mumbai. “I returned home and felt dejected. People had forgotten me and believed I lived in the national capital after my marriage,” says Gupta.

Instagram helped her clear the misconception and it worked in her favour. The actor was inundated with five offers after the post, the first being Anubhav Sinha’s Mulk (2018). However, it was the pivotal role in Badhaai Ho (2018) that made people sit up and take notice of her. “People started thinking about me when they were casting for a film. But Badhaai Ho changed everything for me. Actors come to Mumbai looking for a break… on TV, my break was Khandaan (1985), but in films, I’ve got my break now.