Maamla Legal Hai, Netflix’s legal comedy, has been a runaway hit since its release on the platform earlier this month. The Ravi Kishan-starrer has trended globally among Netflix’s top non-English shows. One of the stars of the show has been Nidhi Bisht, a comedy veteran who plays one of the leads on the show. In conversation with DNA, the actress talks about the show, her character Sujata, and how her own experience as a lawyer helped her.
Maamla Legal Hai is set in the fictitious Patparganj District Court of East Delhi, with Nidhi playing Sujata Negi, an ambitious lawyer who yearns for her own chamber. “I wanted Sujata to be believable as the court’s bua ji. I wanted that to land safely. Thankfully, I was in capable hands and getting good guidance,” she says.
Nidhi was a lawyer before she turned to acting and even practised in the Delhi High Court briefly several years ago. Talking about the one thing from that time that stayed with her while doing Maamla Legal Hai, she says, “In my first year at the Delhi High Court, I was told that female lawyers who practice never get married. I never thought about it too much or try to see if there is any truth to it. But the more and more I tried to understand this character, I tried to understand that statement now. This was partially how I got to Sujata.”
Nidhi recalls her days as a lawyer and adds, “I saw a lot of colourful lawyers. Delhi High Court is a very sophisticated place in comparison. Some of the biggest, most senior lawyers would cycle to the court – the Anil Kapoors of law. They would be surrounded by interns. You would see senior counsels running from one court to another. My seniors would tell me that they just go from one hearing to another and appear. Then my seniors would joke, ‘bana liye sir ne Rs 1.5 crore 10 minute mein (he just made Rs 1.5 crore in 10 minutes)’. This was all new to me.”
Maamla Legal Hai, directed by Rahul Pandey, stars Nidhi alongside Ravi Kishan, Naila Grewal, Anant Joshi, Vijay Rajoria, Tanvi Azmi, and Yashpal Sharma. It is currently streaming on Netflix.
