In an EXCLUSIVE interview with Firstpost’s Lachmi Deb Roy, Mona Singh talks about her latest show on Netflix, ‘Kohrra’, how OTT helped her in reinventing herself, women’s roles changing in cinema and more.
Restrained emotion and the unhurried storytelling are the highlights of Netflix’s Kohrra. Mona Singh doesn’t try hard to show her emotions, but from the very first scene there is a deep pain written all over her face. She explained in an interview with Firstpost, how she is the exact opposite of the character she played in the show.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
You’re the new entrant in Kohrra. You show a very restrained kind of emotion in the series. How did you prepare yourself for the role?
You see Dhanwant, my character in Kohrra carries a lot of trauma and as an actor, you have to know your emotions. I do not try to escape darkness, I try to understand it. I spent a lot of time thinking about her life before the camera began to roll. What is exactly going on in her mind once the fog or Kohrra settles is what I tried to understand. What is she running after? There were very intense workshops and we had the luxury of time to create a backstory for her. It was mostly the workshops conducted by the Kohrra team that made me understand the character better and go deeper.
How much of the character of Dhanwant did you carry back home because this is something that was going to stay with you for a long time?
There were times during and after the workshop and during the shoot that I saw Dhanwant in my eyes and the heaviness that she carried. It wasn’t easy. After I came back home, I required a lot of silence because doing such an intense role means getting into the skin of the character and you kind of carry the sadness back home. It’s not easy to play such a heavy character with so many layers.
The character that you play is very stoic. Do you relate to any bit of it that you have played in
_Kohrra_?
I’m not stoic at all, I’m very expressive (laughs). Dhanwant is just the opposite of me. I had to understand that complexity of her silence, her world, and her darkness from which there was no escape. There were heavy duty workshops that helped me understand her better. As far as the references to the character are concerned, Sudip Sharma (creator of the show) did share a book to me to read before we began shooting. It was a very dark and disturbing book and I asked him ‘Sir yeh kya de diyaa aapne.’ And then I started reading the script and read it at least 8 to10 times before the shoot.
What do you have to say about the change that has come in cinema? The appetite of the audiences has also changed.
OTT has given us a lot more room to play and explore and to reinvent and break stereotypes. I think that OTT has given me a whole new life and many more characters to explore. This is a very beautiful time where women are not just playing positive or negative roles. They are grey and flawed. I love the exploration of women who are flawed and vulnerable.
WATCH the trailer of Kohrra here:
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