It’s always a joy watching Tillotama Shome on screen, whose latest work in the Hindi adaptation of the spy series The Night Manager has won her all-round praise, with most hailing her as the best part of the Disney+Hotstar show that boasts names like Anil Kapoor and Aditya Roy Kapur.

It’s an even greater joy chatting with Tillotama who is a breath of fresh air at a time when everyone else seems so consumed with pushing ahead in the race, with little consideration for others. The Telegraph chatted with the effervescent actor on being Lipika Saikia Rao in The Night Manager and how she has decided to live her life and career now.

Had you watched the original British The Night Manager and what did you think of it?

No, I hadn’t watched the original. When I was offered the part, I told Sandeep (Modi, creator and showrunner) that I wanted to read the script. To be honest, it doesn’t matter if I have watched the original or not because anyway we weren’t going to make the original again (smiles). This is an adaptation.

The RAW agent Lipika Saikia Rao that I play in The Night Manager is very different from a secret agent in London because our contexts are very different. It was more important for me to read the script that we were going to shoot. Also, I knew that the part that was being offered to me was played by Olivia Colman in the original, and then I didn’t want to see it at all! (Laughs) That’s because I absolutely admire her and I am in awe of her, starting right from Tyrannosaur (2011). I knew that if I saw it, it would become a massive stumbling block and I couldn’t help but make comparisons. I had to make Lipika my own, based on the writing of Shridhar Raghavan, who is our writer on the show. I wanted to play Lipika from that and not have any echoes of the original.

Considering you are such a big fan, was it a goosebump-inducing moment when you came to know that your part had been played by Olivia Colman?

Once I was confirmed for the part, I just kept hearing ‘Olivia Colman, Olivia Colman... oh, you are playing Olivia Colman’s part....’ Initially, it brought on a lot of smiles, but after a point, I was like, ‘Enough!’ (Laughs and rolls her eyes) I was so nervous and anxious and I was like, ‘Why are you guys repeating it again and again?! Just get Olivia Colman then!’ I finally told them that I don’t want any more pressure and to let me do Lipika like Sandeep Modi and our wonderful co-director Priyanka Ghosh had imagined her and let me bring her to life.

What struck me about Lipika, apart from your outstanding acting, was how non-dramatic she is, given that we tend to make our secret agents quite filmy....

She does come across as a little haphazard and all over the place, but there is a definite method to her madness. She works in a man’s world and has a mind that’s really sharp. She is quite aware of the dynamics at play and has found a sense of humour to navigate through it. She is also not guilty about breaking the rules (smiles). She is not god-fearing, you know. If something is important to her, she is okay with doing away with ceremonial gestures and protocol. She is not unethical, though. She has a lot of integrity.

But that can conversely be boring also, na? Like, ‘Oh God, such a great person!’ (Laughs) Wanting to save the world and all that. I like the fact that she is good at the job she is doing, she knows the risks. She’s not a field agent where she is shooting around, but she knows the dangers involved with the portfolio that she has. She definitely has a moral compass.

What I like about her is that she isn’t perfect. She can lose her temper, she can say very inappropriate things without even realising it. She gets irritated by protocols, and she feels that protocol cramps her style. She’s always like, ‘Let me go where I have to go!’ She’s very human.

Tillotama as Lipika Saikia Rao in The Night Manager, streaming on Disney+Hotstar

Is her devil-may-care attitude aspirational to some degree? How many of us, after all, can break rules and do what we like...

I think I like following rules (smiles). But I also think that if I hadn’t broken certain essential rules when I started out, I wouldn’t be here today. I am here because I kept relooking at myself and changing and improvising.

I don’t know whether I am like Lipika or whether Lipika is like me. There is a physical transformation that is needed for every character that we play, and our body is the vessel with which we act... so there are bound to be echoes. I need to feel a kind of kinship with all the women that I play, including Karishma from Delhi Crime (2) or Lipika from The Night Manager... two women who are on opposite sides of the law and completely different from one another.... I have to find a common ground with them. In the Venn diagram, there has to be an overlap between me and the characters that I play in order for me to access the character’s humanity. I have to like something about them... otherwise, I can’t play them.

There is so much diversity in your work now. Would you count this as the best phase in a more than two-decade-old career?

Oh yes, truly! I share this not with arrogance but with gratitude and relief that this notion of women and, particularly female actors having to retire after their ‘youth’, has passed. The existence of actors like us debunks this ageist theory. My 40s have been the most exciting, in terms of the number and diversity of opportunities and, most importantly, age-appropriate characters. Makers are not trying to fit me into the role of a 20-yearold nor are they ageing me to look like a hero’s mother. That is such a relief!

As we get older, our responses, experiences and intuitions change us. There is a certain richness that comes into the mind when the body is beginning to fall apart! (Laughs) Your brain computes things faster and your instincts become honed with time, and I can bring all that into my characters because now they are closer in age to what I am.

It’s such a relief not to have to hide anything. This is how I look... I am 43 and I am excited about becoming 44 soon. I am glad that creators and film-makers are not bothered about how I look or how old I am.

You know, like everything else in my life, I came on to working on streaming platforms very late (smiles). I learnt swimming at 30, driving after that...

What kept you going when you didn’t have the kind of work you do now?

I have a great support structure... a very loving, progressive family. I have been practising Buddhism for the last 25 years. I also have some great friends who enrich my life. Of late, I have gardening and doing embroidery that I adopted to tackle the anxiety that came on during Covid and my mother’s battle with cancer.

The creative pursuit of being an actor and my personal life have seamlessly become one. And who I am at home has a great impact on who I am on set. The ferocity of my mother’s desire to live and her concern and compassion for people who are also battling terminal illnesses while she has been battling her own has been such an eye-opener. Her spirit and her idea of mortality have made it very clear to me that this is how I want to live. It may take me 100 years to get there but this is who I want to be. If this is too naive an approach in this fiercely competitive industry, then I am a fool... and I am happy to be a fool.

I have picked up things that allow me to live in the moment and that has translated into my work. The kind of hours we put in and the nature of the work that we do, we can’t do it unless we do it with joy and with consideration for others. When I was angry and cynical about not getting my due in my work, I only ended up pushing them further away. And now when I am trying to live like my mother, I am getting things in my life and work I never even asked for.