Richa Chaddha “I Am Not Stupid To Take Up The Offer “

Set in Mumbai, in the backdrop of the Powerplay League, a fictional version of the IPL, the series Inside Edge follows the Mumbai Mavericks through a season. Directed by Karan Anshuman, (who made his directorial debut with Bangistan in 2015), the 10-episode series also stars Vivek Oberoi, Sanjay Suri, Sayani Gupta, Sarah Jane Dias and Tanuj Virwani. Richa’s performances have left an indelible mark. Her current project Inside Edge an Amazon Prime show called Inside Edge which is based on cricket and showbiz sees Richa play the character of a Bollywood superstar who is also an entrepreneur who owns a cricket team. JYOTHI VENKATESH meets Richa Chaddha at the office of her friend at an apartment bang next to Manish Market in Andheri, where she is promoting the web series as an actor. In the series Richa Chadha plays Zarina Malik, a successful actress who also owns The Mumbai Mavericks, a cricket team. For this role, she took notes from her life as an actor as well as her friends who are entrepreneurs and business women.

Richa admits at the outset that she undertook deep research to get into the skin of her character to develop a unique body language for Zarina Malik in the show. “Zarina Malik has a nice graph. She is vulnerable too though I would not say that she is like me, especially because she is a super star with airs. I wanted to understand how these women survive essentially in a man’s world. In sectors such as tech, sports, and law, women are top positions but fewer in number as compared to men. I wanted to understand how these girls retain their feminine power and elegance and yet stay assertive. I hope it shows in my work, “exults Richa.

“Today films do not make money but producers don’t learn at all from their mistakes.”

Richa is excited about the roles played by Sarah Jane Dias and Sayani Gupta. “The show has some fantastically written female characters. Jane Dias plays a glamorous host who knows the sport and Gupta plays a sports analyst,” says Chadha. Throwing more light on her role, Richa says, “My character struggles to hold her own in a male-dominated industry where being undermined is routine. In other words, not very different from situations I face in my off-screen life. I don’t react to it anymore because it’s so prevalent,” says the 30-year-old actress .

Asked whether she was hesitant to take up the offer, Richa says, “I am not stupid to take up the offer. Let’s face facts. Today the fact is that films are not making money any more but the big producers do not learn at all from their mistakes. There is very high and steep taxation and the footfalls in cinema houses are coming down rapidly. Besides the fact that the government has failed to control piracy which has taken alarming proportions, it is sad that while the collections at the turnstiles at cinema houses are coming down, the sales of popcorn and cola have shown a substantial increase.”

“What’s the point of putting your name to something you aren’t going to actually write?”

Richa adds that the writing was very good as the team had researched thoroughly. “It gave us room to learn and experiment. I was not at all skeptical whether to take up the offer or not because in the first place it is not just a web series. It’s DOD. It is going to be the future of entertainment all over the world. We will be remembered as the actors who took the first step,” she says.

Known to be selective about her projects, Richa keeps objectification in check. Affirming that she is no prude, Richa clarifies, “It’s not like I won’t dance to a song, but I certainly have to agree with the concept of the music and lyrics,” she says. There have been situations when Richa has asked for her dialogues to be altered, like she did during the making of Inside Edge, “There was a line which could be misconstrued as suggesting that all actresses have to sleep around to get work. I asked for it to be changed and they did. It’s important to have a team that is open to such suggestions.”

Richa Chadha decided to write a book which addresses misogyny, body image and eating disorders last year when she was persuaded to write after Penguin Random House approached her post her TED talk on sexism and misogyny in society “My publishers approached me after I did a TED talk about body image and eating disorders last year. My book will address the ingrained sexism and misogyny in our society. I’m trying to analyze that in my own way, and also talk about things like John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, and Leonard Nimoy’s The Full Body Project. I want to talk about body image and how technology has changed the way we perceive ourselves; the kind of hyper reality we are living in and how it’s making sociopaths out of us. I think my book will have little to do with acting, or whatever else people think it will be about,” Richa hopes to take some time off now to finish her book.

“I was asked if I wanted a ghost writer, and I laughed. What’s the point of putting your name to something you aren’t going to actually write,” says Richa who confesses that she used to write a blog when she first moved to Mumbai over eight years ago, but abandoned it when her career began to take off.

Richa feels that acting in the series was like doing a 9 to 5 or a 2 to 2 job. “It is just that we are acting in a different medium. It is just that I made a move sideways from the big screen to the digital scene. Karan Anshuman and Guneet Singh, the director and writers of the show approached me with a kick-ass part. I knew there was an opportunity to do something new here. I feel alienated from the content on Indian TV. This is a regional show, in the sense that the characters speak in Hindi and English, there are subtitles. If it doesn’t work, it’ll be just another lofty experiment. But if it does, maybe we can get a second season as it is a big project in terms of its scale and time allotted. We completed shooting ten episodes in Chandigarh, Bengalooru, Mumbai, Pune.Shooting for Inside Edge was actually more demanding than a film.When you’re working on a film, you have the whole script and you make a graph for your character. But here we shot episodes as they were written, and one has to constantly remember the character’s relationship with other characters, be mindful of the dynamic. That was very tricky,” she says.

Richa who has also produced a Punjabi short film, Khoon Aali Chitthi (Letter Written in Blood). She adds that she is happy that she has been a part of iconic films. “I do not at all care about box office numbers because bad films too make a lot of money. We are the faces of the change in Indian cinema”.

The grapevine insists that Richa is seeing Angad Bedi these days, but Richa wards off any attempt to know about her relationship with him with a evasive reply. “Angad is a sweet guy who is very dedicated to his work. What I like about him is that he has incredible commitment towards his job and is punctual to the core too, which is a rare quality”.

Richa confesses that her five best films till date are Masaan, Gangs of Wasseypur, Fukrey, Oye Lucky Lucky Oye and last but not the least her forthcoming film Love Soniya which is an International film on human trafficking, which is being readied for release in September this year.The film also stars Demi Moore, Freida Pinto, Sai Tamhankar, Anupam Kher, Manoj Bajpai, Adil Hussain and Rajkummar Yadav.

Richa Chaddha signs off. ”I am choosy because I want to do films which have good content, especially since I do not have a famous boyfriend or God father to back me. Also I want to continue to do a good job in content -oriented films and do not want to be one of the millions who chase stardom. I am not greedy for money and am quite happy with the books that I read”.