Actor Shekhar Suman is best known for TV shows Dekh Bhai Dekh, Reporter, Tedhi Baat and Movers & Shakers. One of Indian television’s highest-paid actors in the ’90s, Suman stars in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Netflix series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, which also features his son Adhyayan Suman in a double role. We chatted with Suman about working with Sanjay Leela Bhansali, memories of his debut film Utsav co-starring Rekha and his personal struggles.

Forty years in show business — how do you look at your journey?

Shekhar Suman: It’s a journey that is a little complicated but that’s what makes the journey beautiful. I have not explored myself fully as an actor because I did not get the opportunities. It’s very important to get the right opportunities. I didn’t want to be stereotypical. I wanted to be an actor who should be given the liberty to interpret his roles the way he wants to. But that didn’t happen.

How do you look at the opportunity that Heeramandi offered?

Shekhar Suman: Heeramandi gave me the opportunity to play a quintessential nawab. All these characters who belong to a certain era have more flesh in them and are a bigger challenge to play than the contemporary characters. Zulfikar, the nawab, who is solicitous and at the same time supercilious and degenerate, gets unwittingly and inadvertently involved with the politics of Heeramandi, and how he’s used and how he uses others is the story.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali wanted to cast you as Chunni Babu in Devdas (2002). Why didn’t that materialise?

Shekhar Suman: That didn’t work out because I had too much work on my hands at that time. And though I wanted to do it, I was bound by a contract that I had to be there and I had to do it. Plus, there was huge monies involved. So, that remains a regret. But then, destiny has made amends for it with Heeramandi.

What was Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s brief to you about playing Nawab Zulfikar?

Shekhar Suman: ‘Play it your way’. He gave me the latitude to play it my way. He said, ‘This is the character. I don’t want to give you instructions. But this is the story, this is the backstory, and this is where you are right now.’ Because I was in the midst of it, I didn’t know what had been shot before or what was going to be shot after. It’s an eight-episode show and it’s difficult to understand every layer of it.

He simply told me, ‘You play it intuitively, thinking I hope I’m right.’ And more often than not, when you rely on your intuition, it’s almost right. I’m thankful to him that he gave me the liberty and freedom to perform.

How did you work on your chemistry with Manisha Koirala, who plays Mallikajaan in Heeramandi?

Shekhar Suman: Chemistry is a much-abused term. Characters are written in mind with a certain chemistry. You follow that. It’s not important whether Shekhar Suman and Manisha Koirala have chemistry. The chemistry has to be there between the characters we play – Zulfikar and Mallikajaan. Chemistry is not something that you imagine. It happens when you are enacting and rehearsing.

What did you like about working with Sanjay Leela Bhansali?

Shekhar Suman: Bhansali saab is an alchemist. I keep calling him an auteur, a connoisseur, a virtuoso, a maestro. He’s a wonderful guy. What I like about him is his impatience. He wants results and the world is full of mediocrity. Nobody can match his expectations. Once, he gave one of my scenes to his assistant directors to shoot and I was not happy.

I said, ‘I’m doing this only for Mr Bhansali. I don’t want ADs directing me.’ They cannot possibly have the same vision or passion as Mr Bhansali. I shot that scene and I said I was not happy. Mr Bhansali saw it and said, ‘This is horrible. I’ll have to reshoot it.’ Then he shot the scene and the results were drastically different. So, that’s what happens when you have a master craftsman at the helm.

Like Heeramandi, your debut feature film Utsav (1984) was also a magnum opus. You met your Utsav co-star Rekha at the Heeramandi premiere. Did that bring back any memories?

Shekhar Suman: It brought my entire journey of 38 years in front of my eyes. It was so beautiful to meet Rekha because I have a tremendous amount of respect for the lady for two reasons. Firstly, for being what she is and what she was, the prima donna. Somebody who excelled in her craft.

Secondly, my indebtedness is because she agreed to work with me as the hero in my first film and there were intimate scenes. These were enough reasons for her to say no. Producer Shashi Kapoor and director Girish Karnad had enough reasons to not take a new actor because they had to sell a very expensive film. I will forever be indebted to Shashi Kapoor, Girish Karnad and Rekha. I learnt a lot in Utsav, and that all came rushing back. My first day of shoot with her, and all the scenes that I did with her, she made me so comfortable.

For me, it was a daunting task — a young guy in his early 20s to face someone like Rekha, with Girish Karnad directing and Shashi Kapoor standing right there watching you. The onus was on me and it was huge. Anyone else would have collapsed. But god gave me enough strength. Because of my theatre training, I had the confidence that I could pull it off, and I did.

What did you feel about being part of a show that’s also important for your son Adhyayan’s career?

Shekhar Suman: It was a very emotional moment for me. I’m grateful to god for giving this opportunity to a boy who waited 15 years for his career to take off. He’s gone through the vicissitudes of life and has kept his chin up and head above the water. He has shown enough resilience and perseverance and retained his dignity. I am extremely proud of him and very happy to see his radiant face because it’s a validation for an actor when Mr Bhansali takes you on. It suddenly lifts you from a deep abyss and puts you on a pedestal. That boosts your self-confidence.

There were two roles that I played, the role of a father and the role of Zulfikar. So, I was watching him perform as an actor and as a father. There are only a few moments in life that are momentous and should be preserved. This is one of those moments.

Do you remember any defining father-son moment when Adhyayan was going through a low?

Shekhar Suman: He went through a lot of emotional turbulence in his personal life. His relationships were not working out. Everything that could go wrong was going wrong with him.

I feel that he gave an outstanding performance in Jashnn, which Mahesh Bhatt ghost-directed. Bhatt saab was all praise for this boy. But he said, ‘If Jashnn doesn’t run for any reason, then your stardom is delayed. This is the best an actor could ever do. And at your age, that grasp and that acumen is unimaginable.’ But Jashnn didn’t run. I don't know why.

I sat with him and explained to him the enormity of the tragedy that I was dealing with after having lost his elder brother, my elder son. Life is full of challenges and miseries. You look around and you’ll be surprised how miserable most people are professionally and personally. I said, ‘Your tragedy is nothing compared to theirs. You have a house, you stay comfortably. I know there is a turmoil within you. Fight your demons.’

I directed him in Heartless (2014), but the film didn’t run. I remember hugging him tight and saying, ‘Sorry, I did my best.’ And that was probably a defining moment where both of us thought that we had to just fight it out every moment. Life gives you all the tools and strength to take on the biggest challenges. I think he just followed my diktat and became the stronger man that he is today. His journey has just begun.

Let’s rewind to your famous TV show Movers & Shakers…

Shekhar Suman: It is very important to keep reinventing yourself as an actor and as a human being. That’s the reason why I had taken up Movers & Shakers. I like satire and I thought that it’s also inadvertently a part of my social responsibility that I should be talking about the ills of society. I also thought that it gave me a complete sense of liberty and latitude to improvise a lot of things. That helped me enormously as an actor. So, whatever I do is to better myself as an actor, which few people understand, which is my secret.

I’m quintessentially a stage actor. I was part of the repertory company in Delhi at the Shri Ram Centre for Art and Culture. I’ve had the biggest tragedy in my life, losing my eldest son, which completely devastated me, and I’m still struggling with it. As a kid, I was always in love with tragedy. And this is ironic that it happened to be in such a way.

But I loved a different kind of tragedy. There was a tragedy of Devdas (1955). I loved the tragedy of the relationship between Akbar and Salim in Mughal-e-Azam (1960). I loved the tragedy that a brother had to shoot his brother in Gunga Jumna (1961). I love the tragedy in Deewar (1975) and Mother India (1957). The tragedy of a courtesan in Pakeezah (1972). So, satire is just to balance that whole tragedy, that seriousness within me, and that’s a craft. So, people should not take me very seriously there, and I don’t take myself seriously there.

What is your take on satire content created in today’s times?

Shekhar Suman: It’s lost, unfortunately. It has lost its direction, its flavour and its integrity. If you lose your integrity, then they are just words, expletives, and doing it just for the heck of it. It’s a very precious art. But when it becomes pedestrian, it falls off the pedestal.