Charlie Chopra’s Bhagyashree Tarke: ‘Vishal Bhardwaj spotted me in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding - The Musical’ | Exclusive

Theatre actor-director Bhagyashree Tarke - who is best known for her plays like Salma Deewani, The Last Poet, Is There A Way and Monsoon Wedding - The Musical - is making her OTT debut with acclaimed filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj’s highly-anticipated murder-mystery thriller series Charlie Chopra & The Mystery of Solang Valley, the pilot episode of which is currently streaming on SonyLIV. The show is inspired by celebrated author Agatha Christie’s crime mystery 1931 novel The Sittaford Mystery.

A National School of Drama graduate, Bhagyashree’s first-ever on screen performance sees her alongside industry greats like Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah, Neena Gupta and Gulshan Grover, as well as Lara Dutta, Wamiqa Gabbi, Priyanshu Painyuli and Paoli Dam, among others. 

In a free-wheeling conversation with OTTplay, Bhagyashree spoke about her journey from the stage to screen, her experience of working with a legendary cast, her much talked-about play Salma Deewani, which has a curious connection with Bollywood star Salman Khan, and more. Excerpts:

Q. Tell us about your character in Charlie Chopra…

A. I think it’ll just go ahead from what you see in the first episode, as I cannot reveal much about my character at this point. In the series, I’m a girl in her early 20s, who’s part of the same estate where this murder happens. She stays there with her mother, and apparently becomes one of the suspects. It’s much like a whodunit story. The story progresses because she gets possessed or reveals that somebody is dead. So in one way, she’s the one who opens the whole story up. 

Also read: Charlie Chopra’s mentor-actress Daminee Basu: Vishal Bhardwaj doesn’t shy away from appreciating others’ works | Exclusive

Q. How did you land a role in the Vishal Bhardwaj series?

A. I was doing a play, called Monsoon Wedding - The Musical, with Mira Nair, in which I was playing a couple of small roles in it. Vishal Bhardwaj had composed the music for it. The shows were happening in Doha. During the FIFA World Cup. Vishal sir happened to be there to watch the shows. And after the show, he just met me and said that he really liked my work. “I could feel your energy on the stage. You have a great presence,” he said. And I was like, “Well, thank you so much.” I was really pleased and very happy, because I’m a fan of his work.

Then he said, “Do come to Bombay and we can work together. I’d love to work with you.” And I was like, “Oh, I’m from Hyderabad. I don’t live in Bombay.” Responding to that, he said, “Then, come to Bombay, we’ll get some work for you. Then, when I came to Bombay, I just texted him that I’m here in Bombay.” He said, “Okay, why don’t you just audition and go?” 

I, then, auditioned for this role. I think the script was not even completely ready at that time. There were a couple of pages of writing that was done. I auditioned for it. And then the same day, I got to know that, perhaps, I’m getting the role. And I was like, okay, I’m not sure. So many times it happens that you get shortlisted, but you don’t get the part. So, I was just waiting. And then a few days later, I got a text from him saying, “The show is on, and you’re a part of it. So, keep your dates free.” And that’s it. I got a role in the show via theatre. I always thought that I’ll just continue doing theatre. And if theatre pushes me into cinema or web shows or something like that, that should be my route. I think it happened just as I imagined.

Q. Charlie Chopra has a stellar cast. Tell us about your experience on the set.

A. I think I was the first person to be locked in for the show, and the rest of the cast was still being found. I didn’t know who all were going to be part of this series. I was just ecstatic that Vishal sir was going to direct this, and that it’s going to be great. And then slowly, I got to know that there’s going to be Neena Gupta, Ratna Pathak Shah and the others. I actually got to know who’s doing what during one of the table reads, very close to the beginning of the shoot. And that was my day. I was like, okay, I’m feeling very nervous and conscious. But I think the fact that one day Vishal sir found me. Because otherwise, it’s very difficult to break into this whole medium of cinema, camera. Even though people watch you doing theatre, they don’t always trust that you will be able to do the same thing or you will be able to deliver in front of the camera in a similar manner.

But I think the way Vishal sir trusted me, it made me very comfortable among all these stars. And most of them were, in a way, my seniors from the National School of Drama (NSD). So, whenever we sit and chat, we talk about the school, we talk about how NDS used to be earlier and how it is now - about the teachers, the curriculum and modules. Naseerussin sir and Ratna ma’am used to discuss that a lot. I also think a lot about my wonderful experience with one female actor, which is Lara Dutta.

It’s been wonderful, because she plays my mother in the show. And I think it’s amazing how you suddenly interact with this person and you feel like, oh my god, this is why she’s been Miss Universe. You can feel it. You can feel her qualities as a person and her qualities as an artiste. I think she gave me great space and a lot of encouragement. She was, in a way, also protective about whenever there were difficult scenes to do. She was extremely protective of me. So, I think my experience with Lara was very enriching, and it was very inspiring to see how humble she is. I think everybody, all the people in the cast, were very supportive and very enabling of whatever I can do. Because it happens that you get some space to perform, but your environment just gives you the vibe. It was so beautiful. Everything was so enabling on the set.

Also read: Lara Dutta Bhupathi’s Charlie Chopra: Preview of the pilot episode created by Vishal Bhardwaj OUT now on Sony LIV

Q. Have you been an Agatha Christie fan?

A. It is really sad. I wish I could say yes! I wish I could just lie about this, so that you could put this up with a picture of me, saying she reads a lot of books, and has been reading murder mysteries. But no, I think during childhood, I’ve not been so much into reading mysteries. So I’ve never read an Agatha Christie novel. I only heard about her through my aunts and cousins, who would read and then speak about her stories. But I never read them myself. I’m not as big a fan of reading, as much as I am of watching stuff. Movie images attract me a lot. So I’ve not read anything like that, but I’ve always been fond of murder mysteries and thrillers. Also, I never thought that my first work would be a murder mystery. This is the most surprising thing that I would do in my life. I still cannot digest the fact that I’m part of a murder mystery.

Q. So, how challenging was it for you to prepare for your role then?

A. I think it’s kind of funny that although I never read these novels, I watched a lot of films. And whenever I have some free time, I would just behave like I am in a murder mystery. It’s happened so many times in my life that I’m with my brother or my cousins or sometimes I’m just enacting by myself that I’m part of a murder mystery. In that, I’m either the detective or I’m the culprit. I’m just speaking in a certain way and embodying suspicion. It’s just a very funny exercise that I would do. 

But I think you just hone your skills. When I did my audition, I just felt like, okay, there’s a certain emotion that I’m still not able to access very well. So that’s when it clicked me. Then I was like, okay, there are a couple of emotions, like that of fear, which is one of the most important emotions that we come across in a murder mystery. I think that was something that I felt that I needed to access. I was finding it a little difficult to access fear.

So, I think it was only my practice of acting or just accessing my emotions that helped. And I believe that to be in the moment when you’re there on set brings about quite a few. And I was trusting the director to tell me if I was doing anything wrong, if it was not enough. That was the process. And then, there was this constant response from all the senior actors on the set. You see that validation in their eyes that they liked it. That they got something from me as a co-actor. It gives you the faith that maybe I’m doing fine, I’m doing okay. It was very enabling. I think it’s the practice of just being in the moment. I was just trying to be there and be present in the moment, and just trying to get my lines properly. 

Q. Your play Salma Deewani has been widely spoken about. Tell us about it…

A. I used to be a journalist before venturing into acting, for about two years. I never knew that I wanted to be an actor. I was writing for print media - a couple of newspapers, to be precise. I was the correspondent for the old city of Hyderabad. So I used to cover religion, crime, and sometimes a little bit of politics. Human interest stories were what I would do the most. 

So that’s when I was doing a story about how the multiplexes that are coming up in the city, and how all the single screens are being washed away because of that. I was interviewing a couple of single-screen cinema managers, and that’s when I got to know that these theatres in the old city are flocked by a lot of Muslim women when there’s a Salman Khan film. The managers said that they make the most money when there’s a Salman film running, because a lot of people come. Later, I also found out that it’s mostly girls, young women and the elderly, who do the advance booking and watch Salman’s films repeatedly. In fact, he is a bigger star than Shah Rukh Khan. 

Then I happened to talk to one or two people and ask them about it, and they had things to say about Salman. There’s nobody like Salman, he’s very helpful to people, he looks very beautiful and stuff like that. 

So when I went to NSD and I wanted to make a solo piece of my own, I thought of this idea. The story is about a lonely woman, who has two young kids, and her husband stays in the Gulf. He works there and keeps sending them money. In the one-hour piece, she talks about her childhood; her adulthood; how she fell in love; and how she stopped going to school because she was very flirtatious with other men. She also speaks about how she was jailed in her house and then got married off. Basically, she finds an escape in her love for Salman Khan.

And then she talks about the real problems of her life, and she addresses mental health issues. She talks about how she has her own philosophy of how, despite having so many problems in her life, we can find that degree of hope and can continue to live. That we can continue to fight for our freedom and our emotional and mental health, and how we can let go of things. Salma Deewani is an interactive play. It’s about Salman Khan, but it’s more about other things in life, too, via Salman Khan.