Applause And After

Sushmita Sen Has Made Heads Turn Playing A Transgender In Taali. She Chats With Tanisha Bhattacharya About Pushing The Envelope As An Actor

- TANISHA BHATTACHARYA

Sushmita Sen started out as a beauty queen and later became an actress. Her journey as an actress, though peppered with commercial hits, didn’t reach the kind of high that was expected. She never faded from public memory. Her bohemian lifestyle was much written about. Brands and fashion houses continued to adore her. She found fulfilment in motherhood and by and large stayed weaning herself away from the limelight after adopting her second daughter in 2010. Now that her adopted daughters Renee and Alisah have all grown up, she has come back to acting again with a bang. Her bravura act in the 2020 series Aarya was much lauded and her performance as a transgender in Taali (2023) has been the talk of the town. The actress talks about her transformation and more in a heart-to-heart interview.

You’ve been Miss Universe, do you think people are ready to accept you in such roles?

When the trailer came out, the comments were mindblowing. Acceptance was through the roof. They loved it. They are looking forward to it, which is a huge conscious shift. Because in my time alone, I think there are at least 50-60 trans community people who are thrilled that I am doing this film. So I think there has been a shift. You can’t please everyone and they have their point of view, I respect that. This is about bringing the third gender and the trans community the acceptance of being human and somewhere we have forgotten that. We have put them in different boxes and we have forgotten that they are humans.