EXCLUSIVE: Tillotama Shome reveals Sunny Deol let a fly crawl into his eye for her close-up: “I would have stopped the scene, even if it was with the world’s BIGGEST leader…”; adds, “I don’t have to carry the flag for independent cinema”
Three days before the release of her Netflix film, Ikka, Tillotama Shome spoke exclusively with Bollywood Hungama on a Zoom video call about the courtroom drama and a lot more.
What do you go through when your film is a few days away from release?
At present, I am going through a migraine because I am staring at a screen (laughs)! So, your brain hurts a little bit due to over-stimulation. The nervousness and slight anxiety are more before the first day of the shoot. It is the day when you wonder, ‘Have you entered the house through the right door?’ (laughs). No matter how much you prepare, that nervousness always shows up as you can’t plan what was going to happen on the set. Meanwhile, the release of the film is not in my hands at all. At this stage, I don’t have anything to do with that part.
At the Netflix event earlier this year, you surprised one and all by revealing during your close-up shot, how Sunny Deol didn’t move though a fly was crawling into his eyes…
Sid (Director Siddharth P Malhotra) had no clue, as the camera was not on Sunny sir. I lost all sense of logic and asked Sunny sir, ‘What were you doing? Why did you that?’. He asked, ‘Do what?’. I replied, ‘There was a fly getting into your eye. I would have stopped the scene. Even if it was with the world’s biggest leader, forget actor, if a fly is going to enter my eye, it’s a human instinct to stop and get it out’. He replied, ‘But your take was going so well. I didn’t want it to go waste’. I was like, ‘My God’!
I am not saying this because actors are expected to say good things about their co-actors. But genuinely, this stayed with me. It was so beautiful for him to put a co-actor ahead of his needs. Nobody would fall thin for anybody for doing that. I was really moved by his generosity.
Ikka is your most commercial film to date. Do you think there’s a perception in the industry that you are more inclined towards indie cinema and won’t be that keen to do a commercial film?
The thing with perception is that I have no clue. It’s their perception, na? My problem is with my own perception of myself. For the longest time, I only got independent films which were experimental and never shown in my country! I thought that maybe this was the road for me. I also realized that if I wanted to stay happy and sane, its best that I didn’t compare myself with others.
But with the advent of OTT, I started getting work on streaming. The audience base started increasing. The kind of parts I got began to change. It became slightly more difficult to differentiate. Ikka is neither a theatrical commercial film nor it is an independent project anymore. It is made on a certain budget and P&A. The scale is larger, even though it’s for streaming. So, this commercial and independent divide has become diluted and, in my case, it became a bit more porous. I still do indie films, like I recently did Baksho Bondi. I am very proud of it and I don’t think it’ll be any other way. I think with the work that one has put in the last 25 years, I guess people feel that they can imagine me in more different ways now, and take a risk, and make me do something I have not done before.
I don’t know what that perception is and whether it has changed. All I can say is that my perception of myself has changed in the sense that I do not want to take myself so seriously. I don’t have to carry the flag for independent cinema. Independent cinema will survive whether or not I exist in it. Commercial cinema will exist whether or not I participate in it. Toh mujhe apne aap ko itna seriously lena hi nahin hai. Mujhe maze lene hai! I don’t know how many years are left for me to act, something that I really love. So, I want to have more fun and I know I’ll have fun the most when I work with good people, those who treat others well. And if I also get a great story and a great part, then it’s a bonus.
It was a revelation to read in the media briefing note that you taught theatre to inmates at a high-security prison in the USA…
After I did my masters in Drama Therapy from New York University, I joined a company called The Creative Arts Team. Within this company, there was a wing that worked at Rikers Island, a high security prison. It has a facility for both male and female prisoners. We taught both sets of prisoners and did Drama Therapy. Drama Therapy uses the arts to facilitate conversations that may not be possible through the conventional chalk-and-talk method.
For instance, if we talk about addiction, all addicts know that what they are doing is not right. Yet, this knowledge doesn’t stop them from doing it. What Drama Therapy can do is create a situation in which they can see their addiction through a different lens and also realize that it’s bad for them. In such delicate spaces, Drama Therapy is very effective in creating a shift of perspective.
What we did was a drop in the ocean because not all criminals are punished for their crimes. Certain classes of society are punished more than others based on various factors like race, caste, privilege, etc. The work that we did was in a very conservative, mainstream, retribution system of crime and punishment, which is what a prison stands for. You committed this crime and you’ll get this punishment. The context is not very nuanced and within the constraints of that context, we did something called Drama Therapy (smiles)!
Part of our work was very ideal and Drama Therapy focused on the potential of prisoners if they got out of person and what they can do differently so that they don’t end up back in prison. It was a lot about the choices we make, their repercussions, how we can make better choices and it was all done without making it sound preachy.
We would create dramatic pieces that spoke about the conflict at hand. My partner and I would enact that scene. Then inmates would react to what that scene was about. We would play it again and again, but every time, they would get to stop the actors and tell him or her to make different choices. They also replaced the actors and they would say the line on their behalf and make a choice that is different. Thus, the piece would not end the way it originally ended.
It helps you study human behaviour in a real-life way, not in a fictional, constructed kind of way. In a class of 20 people, each person was interpreting the material differently. One solved the problem while the other didn’t even see it as a problem.
I am really grateful that I did it because it changed me. It was like a rehearsal for life. When I returned to films, I realised that it had been a better acting school than acting school itself (smiles)! It also boosted my confidence during auditions. Moreover, when you witness human suffering so closely, you begin to realise how fortunate you have been.
Which year was this?
I was in the United States from 2004 to 2008. I completed my master’s degree by mid-2005 and began this work soon after.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Tillotama Shome reveals Sunny Deol let a fly crawl into his eye for her close-up: “I would have stopped the scene, even if it was with the world’s BIGGEST leader…”; adds, “I don’t have to carry the flag for independent cinema” appeared first on Bollywood Hungama.
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