"I'm an accidental actor": Konkona Sensharma

In a career spanning over two decades, Konkona Sensharma has enthralled the audience with her wide variety of acting roles. She has also impressed moviegoers with her directorial stints A Death In The Gunj and a segment of Lust Stories 2. However, she never thought of becoming an actor and later a director in her life. She went with the flow and eventually landed in filmmaking.

She told ANI, “I'm primarily an actor. I had no plans to direct. I had no plans to be an actor. I'm reluctant, I used to be. I'm an accidental actor."

She continued, "Because I didn't want to be an actor, I later became. I got good work. People appreciated my work. I found that I'm spending so much time in Bombay (Mumbai). I might as well take a house, or rent an apartment and at least see how it goes. I always have this thing. I'm very non-committal by nature. I like to see, let's see how it's going. And then we'll decide. I can never plan. I don't know what I am doing next weekend."

A Death In The Gunj is a 2016 drama film written and directed by Konkona Sensharma.

Recalling her working experience in the film and all the tips she got from her mother, veteran film director and screenwriter Aparna Sen, the actor shared, "I used to call her (Aparna Sen) every day with a list of questions. Some of it was also researched to be fair because... it was set in McCluskieganj, in 1979 and there was not a lot of material available on McCluskieganj..."

"We did get into some research, but a lot of it was based on talking to my parents and talking to their friends... 'Did you have running hot water? Who were the Anglo Indians who lived there...where did you guys go'....many questions were asked about that world and what is so interesting when you rely on memory. Memory is a very tricky thing because people remember it differently. So my dad would be like no, but this was something over there and my mom, Oh! I thought it was something, so it's very nice, actually was lovely because it's almost magical and it's part of fiction."

Though Konkona was reluctant initially to foray into direction, she said that being on the sets was helpful for her.

"I think just being on sets is very helpful. I would recommend it to anybody who is starting their career in films or behind the scenes or whatever because film sets are such chaotic environments, that it may seem to a layperson to be a very disorganized space. There are 100-200 persons depending on the scale of the production. It's not a very stable easy to understand environment. The more comfort you have on a set, I feel, the more beneficial it is to you. As an actor, you also get the sense of a camera, you will know the whole world."

After being part of cinema for so long and depicting distinct roles onscreen, the actor shared that she always prefers to do relatable roles.

"It has to be relatable to me," she said while talking about the criteria before choosing a role or project.

Konkona made her debut as a child artist in the film Indira. She garnered the attention of the audience with her film Mr. and Mrs. Iyer. She forayed into Hindi cinema with the drama Page 3 and won two consecutive Filmfare Awards for Best Supporting Actress for her performances in Omkara (2006) and Life in a... Metro. She also worked in movies like 15 Park Avenue, Dosar, Laaga Chunari Mein Daag, Luck By Chance, Wake Up Sid, and Atithi Tum Kab Jaoge?, among others.

Currently, she is part of the crime series Killer Soup. Directed by Abhishek Chaubey the series stars Manoj Bajpayee, Konkona Sensharma, Nasser, Sayaji Shinde, Lal, Anbuthasan, Anula Navlekar, and Kani Kusruti in pivotal roles.

The series revolves around Swathi Shetty a budding cook who wishes for the entire world to enjoy her soup. One mishap kicks off a chain reaction of accidents and frantic cover-ups that find her and her partner in hot water.