'I hadn't worked for three-and-a-half years. I felt the industry was based on who you knew.'
'I didn't belong to a network.'
Nearly 25 years ago, Mira Nair made a joyful film celebrating North Indian Punjabi and the NRI culture.
Monsoon Wedding won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and introduced us to the charming, petite actress Tillotama Shome. She played Alice, the domestic help of a rich Punjabi family, who falls in love with the street-smart hustler PK Dubey (Vijay Raaz).
After the success of Monsoon Wedding, Tillotama spent a few years in New York honing her acting skills and then decided to return to India.
She got work in international productions like Waiting City (2009), Gangor (2010) and Sold (2014) but they were barely seen in India.
During her years of struggle, Shome managed to get some challenging roles in Shanghai (2012), Qissa: A Tale of the Lonely Ghost (2013), A Death in the Gunj (2016) and Sir (2018).
But it is only in the recent years that she has finally established her presence in films and OTT, with Web series like Delhi Crime (2022), The Night Manager (2023), Lust Stories (2023), Kota Factory (2024), Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper (2024) and the recent Paatal Lok 2 (2025).
In February, Shome was at the Berlinale for the premiere of her new Bengali film Baksho Bondi (Shadowbox), directed by the couple Tanushree Das and Saumyananada Sahi.
In one of the strongest performances of her career, Shome plays Maya, a lower middle-class woman struggling to keep her family, including husband Sundar afloat. The film has 19 producers attached to it, including Shome herself.
She tells Aseem Chhabra, "I had to be in my 40s to play these women in their 40s. You wouldn't have managed to explain that to me in my 20s and 30s. I would have said, 'Just give me an audition. I will kill it. I will kill it. But your lived experience makes the deal real."
Tillotama, in this complex role, you often just use your facial muscles to express emotions. How did you prepare for this role?
Tillotama: I find it very difficult to speak about preparation because it's different for different projects. In this case, when I met Tanushree and Somu, it wasn't suggested that I should act in it. They said they wanted my feedback with the script, so I read it with a hawk's eye.
Then they said they wanted me to act in it.
I was taken aback.
But then they came home, and we spent five hours together.
In my mind, I still didn't know when and how the film would get made. In my career, in these last 25 years, it can take a long time from when I read a script to when the film gets made and the world sees it. Often, it can be five to six years from the time we first meet.
So I didn't know if this film would get made.
But I knew I liked Didi (Tanushree) and Somu, and I wanted to be friends with them. I could learn a lot from them.
They had come at a time in my life, where I was thinking about what next.
There was a curiosity in me. I needed to understand processes in making a film that are invisible to actors and I had not experienced them. I had worked on amazing projects but never had this kind of friendship so early on with the filmmakers. It took us six years to make this film.
Tanushree: We had prepared so much for Maya's character, like her account book, her watch, Maya's playlist, photographs of all the women who made Maya, love letters exchanged between Maya and Sundar.
Tillotama: Kya homework karoge tum? Sara homework inhon ne kar diya tha.
Saumyananda: We prepped for so many years that when we started shooting, all the prep was done. We didn't have to discuss too much.
Tillotama: I finished shooting Paatal Lok 2 and within a few days, we were shooting this film. It was in February-March 2023.
When did they bring the script to you?
Tillotama: In 2018.
Then the pandemic hit us.
Tillotama: It was actually a most fertile time for us as friends. We became each other's lifeline. The film is about a caregiver, from her point of view. I was caregiving my mother. Tanushree was caregiving her father. Like Tanushree, my life and work are now in synch. I have learnt to accept that.
When I was younger, I wanted visibility, more and more work, because it was so far and few. I thought my chances were dying out with time. Now, I feel the opposite.
What is the result of six years of knowing somebody, their family, their thoughts, their parents, where they came from, how they think, how they behave as people in critical moments? All the drafts they wrote of their screenplay over six years, to have the privilege to read them, to be invited into a room with the producer. And they were so secure and not egoistic that they give me a chance to be a producer as well.
This opportunity to develop skills is important.
It gave me a chance to understand what it takes to make a film. Then one can be angry about the right things. Otherwise, often you are angry because you don't have the full picture.
You referred to a time when work wasn't very frequent. But now you are very busy. When did it change?
Tillotama: It happened when the viewership changed with Sir (2018) coming on Netflix.
But even before that you had acted in Konkona Sen Sharma's A Death in the Gunj (2016).
Tillotama: A Death in the Gunj came on Amazon Prime much later, even though it was made before Sir.
It was an important film for me because I played a certain class I don't usually get to play. Koko (Konkona Sen) saw me as who I am, while other people wanted to play safe, and cast me in a certain roles based on what they have seen.
I remember Sir was going to open in theatres just when the pandemic hit, but you got a bigger audience on Netflix.
Tillotama: Yes, it was a game-changer. It allowed producers and TV studios to feel like they could make me a part of their shows.
Hindi Medium got made in 2017. You had a small role but you were hilarious in those scenes with Irrfan.
Tillotama: (Casting director and filmmaker) Honey Trehan cast me after he saw me in A Death in the Gunj. He said we have to cast this woman and place her in a social class that she belongs to.
He told me it might help me break my image.
It was a small role but I wanted to spend a day with Irrfan.
Anup Singh's Qissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost (2013) happened before but not many people saw it. It's such a beautiful film but even now, not too many people have seen it.
Tillotama: If it wasn't for Qissa I wouldn't be sitting here. For me, it was a film that made me not quit acting.
You were thinking of quitting?
Tillotama: Absolutely. I hadn't worked for three-and-a-half years. I felt the industry was based on who you knew. I didn't go to FTII (Film and Television Institute of India) and didn't belong to a network.
I am a kind of person who keeps to myself.
Most of the films I had worked on were international co-productions, small parts and the films were never seen or released in India.
Anup Singh offered me Qissa. We did the film that we wanted to make and it's irrelevant how many theatres it opened in.
He taught me so much. He gave me tools I could use in every project after that.
I have worked with other directors who have larger-than-life personalities but Anup introduced me to Chinese paintings, music, (Japanese master Yasujirō) Ozu's films. He realised I hadn't gone to film school and was craving for a sense of kinship. He became a library that you can walk in and read for as long as you want.
I think that's what gave me the courage to be able to look at every woman that play, through the various lenses that Anup created for me.
You said you had no network when you returned to India from the US. But you have a nice network through Konkona's film. There is this group of actors (Kalki Koechlin, Vikram Massey, Gulshan Devaiah and even Baksho Bondi producer Jim Sarbh) and you all became friends.
Tillotama: We were already friends but we have grown up since then. We call out each other when we are not inspired by anyone's work. There's a lot of honesty in this friendship. A form of support which has been very vital in continuing.
But I think Anup actually made me. It's like a dog who can sniff truffle; he gave me the ability to smell.
So as an actress you are now in a great space.
Tillotama: Yes, for sure.
Do you wear saris often? You were so comfortable in saris in Baksho Bondi, the way you rode bicycles or pushed things around. Then I was thinking even Ratna (Sir) and Alice (Monsoon Wedding) wore saris.
Tillotama: I am very comfortable and also because Didi had aged the saris. They were already worn by women, and it is a different feeling. When a woman has worn a sari, she leaves an imprint on it.
Tanushree: The pink nightie she wears in the film is actually my mother's nightie. She was going to throw it and turn it into pocha (rag).
I kept it aside.
I had five-six nighties but we chose this to go with the palette. So even though it is from real life, it is fitted and curated to work for cinema and the visuals.
Tillotama: I felt comfortable because the sari and nightie had been worn 100 times before. This is something that one is beginning to appreciate as one gets older. You are lucky enough to find and touch something, an object, a costume, a prop that has recorded the touch of many people before.
It's great that these roles are being written for a woman of your age and someone who has had life experience.
I feel after my mother's illness where I became a caregiver, it was great to get roles like in Delhi Crime, playing a woman who didn't want to have a child; Lust Stories,a woman who is ashamed of her desires; Tribhuvan Mishra CA Topper, a woman whose husband doesn't have time to listen to her needs; and Paatal Lok 2, a single mother who has to constantly deal with patriarchy.
So I feel, thematically, I had to be in my 40s to play these women in their 40s.
You wouldn't have managed to explain that to me in my 20s and 30s.
I would have said, Just give me an audition. I will kill it. I will kill it.
But your lived experience makes the deal real.
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