From a DJ spinning out gritty beats to a divorcee recovering from a turbulent marriage, Kalki Koechlin's roles in two subsequent Tiger Baby productions shows her diversity. At the launch of her new Amazon Prime series – Made in Heaven – the actress spoke about her most challenging roles and the balancing act that each actor engages in. Edited excerpts.
Tell us about your character in Made in Heaven
I play a woman called Faiza from a well-off family in Delhi. She's an artist – a painter – she's recently divorced from a tumultuous marriage, where she was beaten up by her husband. She's having an affair and she's going to a therapist. She clearly has a lot of baggage in terms of what happened to her and in terms of finding who she is.
Made in Heaven is a commentary on weddings and marriage. What do you think is the biggest problem with the way we look at it?
Marriage contracts had practical reasons to start with. But the wedding of today has become also about social acceptance or show. Neither a legal paper nor a social approval can guarantee the success of two people living together. It comes from people being individual, independent, not depending on the other person for their happiness or blaming them for their failures, but respecting each other and giving your partner space to grow. But that's never really considered when we're talking about marriage.
(Cast of Amazon Prime’s Made in Heaven)
After your role as MC Sky in Gully Boy, do you have any message for those aspiring female hip-hop artistes who are striving to make it despite the sexism they have to face?
I wish I knew more about the hip-hop scene. To be honest I don't but good on those women who are doing it [hip-hop]. There are certain professions that tend to be only for men and only for women and when the other gender comes in, it's seen as a challenge. I'm all for gender fluidity in all professions so I commend these women.
What has been the most challenging character for you to immerse yourself into?
Margarita was one of the most challenging because it's so different from what I've lived in my experiences. One is the technical aspect of playing someone with a disability, but there is the baggage of mental and emotional space, which that person has lived. I remember when I was prepping for the role with Malini (director Shonali Bose’s cousin, who has cerebral palsy and is in a wheelchair), we would spend the whole day in wheelchairs and then, at the end of the day, I would get up and leave. And she said, “That's the difference between you and me. At the end of the day, you can get up and leave.” That is when I decided to stay in the wheelchair for the entire process of the shoot, no matter what I needed to do – even go to the loo in a non-access area. That added a layer. It was a tough time, six months of nothing else.
In theatre, your venture Rape of Lucrece gained much acclaim. How difficult was it to portray Lucrece's plight, specially scenes of sexual violence?
Once you're onstage for live performances, it becomes a part of muscle memory that you have to go through. But when we were rehearsing, we would always practice that scene – the rape scene – for half an hour at the end of the day, so that we would be comfortable with it. We had a ritual of consent before we started. But some days, it would still get really trying, after a day of six hours of rehearsing.The trust with the male character – that ‘yes’ between two people – is very important in a play like this. I am grateful to my director for giving us [the two lead characters] that scope.
Slack lining, theatre, movies, series, poetry... how do you balance it all?
I don't. There are times when you're really busy and you feel like the world is going to crash on top of you. And other times you have no work at all and you feel like you'll never get work again. Our industry is feast or famine – it's all or nothing. I've resorted to times where I put everything else on the shelf and it's just work, work, work. And then I get back to the therapist's room or my family and I say, “guys I have to share something.” You learn to compartmentalise.
