The actress stars in two web-series, Chutzpah and Feels Like Ishq, which premiered on 23 July on SonyLiv and Netflix respectively.
People will be able to relate to my character Shikha, says Chutzpah actress Tanya Maniktala
Mumbai - 23 Jul 2021 17:48 IST
Sonal Pandya
Tanya Maniktala entered the limelight once she was announced as the lead in Mira Nair’s adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Vikram Seth A Suitable Boy in 2019. The series aired on the BBC last July, making history as it was the first show on the British channel to have an all-Indian cast.
Maniktala played Lata, a young woman in 1950s India, whose heart tugs her in two directions as she falls for her fellow college student Kabir (Danesh Rizvi) and Haresh (Namit Das), who has her mother’s approval. The series debuted in India on Netflix last October.
Since then, the young actress has signed on for a number of projects. She will appear in her first film Mumbaikar (2021) directed by Santosh Sivan alongside Vikrant Massey and Vijay Sethupathi. The film is expected to arrive later this year. Meanwhile, two web-series that she has shot for premiered today.
Maniktala, in a telephone conversation, spoke about her excitement about the shows being released on the same day. “Both of these characters show Tanya in a very different light,” she said. “These are babies that I have created [along with] the team, and I hope the audience will also see the love and the effort that has gone into creating these stories and receive it like that.”
In Netflix’s Feels Like Ishq, she plays Mehr who meets with Kabir (Skand Thakur) for a quasi-date at an environmental protest and later gets picked up by the police. In Chutzpah, she plays Shikha, who is in a long-term relationship with Varun Sharma’s Vikas. Most of their on-screen interactions end up taking place online.
After her breakout role in A Suitable Boy, Maniktala was called to read for Chutzpah from Shruti Mahajan Casting. She sent in her audition tape and spoke with the director of the series, Simarpreet Singh. The series has been created by Mrighdeep Singh Lamba.
She recalled, “He’s actually a senior of mine from the theatre circuit, from my college days, and also he was part of Flames, the first web-series that I ever did. So we go back a long way. He presented the idea to me and told me the whole concept.”
She continued, “He had something very unique in his mind. Just seeing that passion and hearing about it, seeing that this was something that I had never tried before. That is how I got on board.”
The challenge on Chutzpah was filming her scenes alone without her co-star Sharma as a scene partner. It also happened to be the first project she took on during the pandemic.
“It was actually very difficult,” Maniktala said. “You don’t have a co-actor to react to. I feel love is such a nuanced emotion. Channelizing all these emotions that you are feeling and summing it up was a challenge but I think we have a really incredible team working on the project. We wanted to hero the internet," she said
Chutzpah, meaning extreme self-confidence or audacity, arrives at a timely moment during this pandemic when people are relying more and more on their digital devices to connect. A series that focuses on the various ways the internet and social media takes over our lives is highly relevant. Maniktala, when she first read the script, said she could relate to it.
“We were all stuck in our homes, locked up and the internet has sort of become this human figure that supersedes all, and it’s very mighty part of our lives,” she explained. “We do our work through Zoom sessions, we do classes, we do video calls with our loved ones, whatever it may be, it’s all through the internet, and the internet sees it all. So it was only right to have somebody talk about it in a way that has never been seen before on-screen.”
“The character that I play, I felt that a lot of people would be able to relate to her. Not just the way Shikha is, but also the situation she is in. The audience will definitely relate to the whole series and its different characters, but Shikha’s character is something we see all around us.”
Maniktala’s own experiences with social media have been largely positive, but she stated, “I do tend to avoid it just because I tend to get overwhelmed by all the love that is coming.”
She went on to say, “It feels surreal honestly, for me, that this is something that could be happening to such an ordinary person whose life just took a turn. But I think it’s time for me to change my perspective, especially with the whole COVID-19 situation [with] people coming together.”
When the second wave of coronavirus overwhelmed the country, Maniktala saw how the internet could be used as a platform for people to come together for the right reasons, working in good faith for humanity.
While her online usage has increased during this time, Maniktala takes a digital detox every now and then.
She added, “The internet is largely is for the things I do. I rely a lot on OTT platforms for my entertainment and I seek refuge in that, so when news would be flooding in from all corners of the globe, it would just be overwhelming, and I would take a digital detox and take a break from everything. And not just indulge in as many feel-good movies as I could. But it’s also made me realize it’s very important to be aware and if you have a voice on social media, it’s important to put that voice in the right form and speak for something that you believe in.”
In contrast to A Suitable Boy, Maniktala’s latest projects have all been set in contemporary times. The actress said she enjoyed playing characters from all eras equally.
“Even though [A Suitable Boy] was set in the 1950s, we were told not to think of it as a period drama at all, because the characters are very much in the nerve of today’s youth,” she said. “The emotions have always been universal and evergreen, so they don’t ever change, it’s only the setting that changes.
“It’s not as if love or seduction didn’t exist back then, all of those things existed. I enjoyed playing Lata as well, and now obviously people [will] see me in a form that they would be able to relate more to because the setup is today’s day and time. The setup has changed but the characters will always be constant,” she said.
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