Despite its limited screen time, Richa Chadha’s tragic yet blistering turn as a courtesan in search of love who dies of heartbreak in Heeramandi has come in for unanimous praise. Before she went off on her maternity break, Richa chatted with t2 on being Lajjo in the Sanjay Leela Bhansali period drama on Netflix.

You are due in July. So this is the last leg before you go off on a break, right?

Yes, almost there. I can’t wait to take a break!

Your role in Heeramandi was limited to two episodes but has had significant impact. What has it been like so far?

The show has been pretty well received. This is one show that is likely to travel out of India and that is what has been happening. It is very heartening to see that.

I took a very calculated risk with this character (Lajwanti aka Lajjo). I was offered some other parts in Heeramandi but I didn’t want to do them because I thought that this is the thing that will surprise the audience as far as my skill set and my range is concerned. And that is what has happened.

I haven’t done a character which has, in the past, been so unanimously positively received. There are those who love Bholi (Punjaban from the Fukrey films) in north India, many have liked the cameo in Panga while there are others who like what I play in Inside Edge. But there has never been that all-round appeal.

In fact, even when I have tried to do restrained acting, like in Masaan, I was told: ‘Oh, you didn’t do any acting,’ without people even realising that it is really hard to do such a restrained part that doesn’t express so loudly.

But for Heeramandi, I have been so pleased and positively touched. People are writing essays on my performance (on social media) and that is moving for me because I put a lot of thought into what I do... I almost let my subconscious take over. My quest with this character was to leave the audience with a gut punch right in the beginning as a nice setup for what was to come. Of course, you see the women and their machinations for property or outwitting each other, for control, for jewellery, for freedom, for personal security.... you see all of that.

But the show ends with the plight of these women who are put on a pedestal and given love and yet they have to deal with social stigma and are then very easily discarded when things get difficult by the same men who patronise them.

The essence of Lajjo is in her unwillingness to complete the dance that she has been paid for with money thrown at her feet. It is about her crying in that shot at the end. That, for me, is the essence of that dance ... the humiliation of having to be in a society where you are adored and discarded with equal ease.

We would have definitely liked to see more of the character...

I look at my work as a gift to the audience. I feel that somebody who watches the first two episodes of Heeramandi should not be the same human being after that. Something should have shifted in them after seeing what Lajjo goes through. Even if it is a small, imperceptible shift, it is fine. That just goes to show that the gift has been received. Something about the pain that Lajjo experienced moved a lot of people — everyone who has had their hearts broken and lots of people from the LGBTQIA+ community because they have to deal with stigma and heartbreak at a different level.

I know that the audiences wish that there was more of me but I think I was well utilised. I think Sanjay Leela Bhansali really loves me! (Laughs) That is because if you remove Lajjo from the overall scheme of things, it doesn’t change anything in the story. The story goes on. So for him to just want me to be a part of Heeramandi in some capacity was wonderful. I feel very gratified to have his love at that level.

Your dance sequence in Episode 2 is a highlight with that combination of grace and heartbreak. Can you break it down for us?

If you are a driver, you could be having a heartbreak but still driving on autopilot. You will change gears and hit the brake... you may not be as efficient as you usually are, you may not be perfect... but the driving cannot suffer because you are enraged or crying or laughing hysterically.

Similarly, Lajjo had to show her expertise as a dancer even when she was dancing at the wedding of the man she had loved and who had discarded her. The show depicts these women training in dance and music from a very early age... there is an ustadji, there are tutors, there are sitar players and tabla players who exist in their ecosystem to just make sure that they are correctly prepared. Lajjo had to do that and manage her breakdown at the same time. When she is crying, it has to be perfectly aligned with the movement of her feet.

I love to layer my performances... one sentence can mean more than one thing... and it depends on how an actor uses the eyes or the voice. Even in the shot before that (when Zorawar, played by Adhyayan Suman, throws Lajjo out of the club), where she is screaming at the window, I wanted people to see that she feels insulted and abandoned. She can’t believe that she has been thrown out by him. She is screaming at him to let her in. She is crying and yet smiling because she likes to look at him. She feels glad that she can still look at him and that is the level of delusion I wanted to communicate in those few seconds.

For me, it has always been quality over quantity. I don’t want to exist in a show in an insecure way and just go on and on with a character without any feeling of catharsis or overall impact.

You have mostly played strong characters. Even though she exists in a different time and space, did you identify with Lajjo in any way?

The thing I strongly related to was her quest to have a normal life... or what she thinks is a normal life — wedding, husband, family.... That is mostly true for people who have been abandoned or had a bad childhood. They are desperate for the love that they didn’t find in their childhood. They are almost obsessed with the idea of having that emotional security, having someone just hear them out or indulge them for five minutes, listen to their ambitions, their dreams and hopes.

I have had a great childhood and I am blessed with a normal family life. I have a wonderful partner (actor Ali Fazal) and I couldn’t be more grateful being in show business. I love acting but there are so many times I wish that I could be anonymous while continuing to do my work, which is just not possible. A lot of people are in it for the fame. I am not saying that doing PR is bad. I understand that it comes with the territory. But I also want a quiet anonymous life to do normal things. Those are the things I related very strongly with Lajjo. The rest, like the heartbreak, I had to imagine. I have not really had my heart broken, but I have been on the other side and got rid of some people very easily (smiles).

Also, while working on Love Sonia (2018), I had met a lot of women who were trafficked. That had moved me and I wanted to do right by them while playing Lajjo. I felt that I had connected to a woman who may not be real but one who carries the nucleus of those women I had met. That was very important for me to convey.

There has been some criticism about how Bhansali’s hyper-real treatment fails to convey Heeramandi as it was during that time. How do you react to that?

He has imagined what it would have been. I am a Punjabi who has grown up hearing: ‘Jine Lahore ni vekhiya oo jamiya hi ni.’ That means that whoever has not seen Lahore in its full glory as the capital of Renaissance in the East has not seen beauty or been alive.

People are sharing videos of what Heeramandi is like today. A shadow of that even exists in Bombay in Grant Road and under Kennedy Bridge where girls would be trained to dance and sing. But all that is gone — whether it is due to colonialism or to the overarching impact of the entertainment industry — where people collect to hear a piece of poetry or watch dance.

My mother pointed out correctly that Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi was full of historical inaccuracies. It shows that Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel met Gandhi when he arrived in India, but that isn’t true. They only met two-three years after he came back. Does that make Gandhi a bad film? Is it an untrue depiction? It captures the essence of who Gandhi was, while also addressing the issue that the screenplay didn’t permit him to have breathing space to depict those three years accurately.

Besides producing films, Ali and you have diversified into your clothing line that captures his Lucknowi heritage...

We have a very humble production house (Pushing Buttons Studios), which essentially has only two people — Ali and me — working. We want to find stories in India that have the potential to travel all over the world and also touch local audiences.

Our clothing line Ehaab Couture is a hat tip to the culture of Lucknow that Ali hails from. During covid, we realised how difficult it became for local artisans to sustain. We wanted to do something with them in the long term. ‘Ehaab’ means ‘gift’ and it is our way of giving back to them.