When she looks at her son, played by Riz Ahmed, in the new Amazon series Bait, there are flashes of confusion in her eyes. Could the boy she loves be this devious; this self-servingly ambitious; and, at other time, this stupid?
The confusion he feels, as a Pakistani-Briton auditioning to play James Bond, is mirrored in her fear at what this may mean for a troubled, struggling young actor. Soon enough, the fear and confusion are overridden by glee: her son really is the star she privately hoped he might be.
This is the first time she uses words to tell us what she feels. “Main kehti thi na (Didn’t I say it)? Super James Bond, mera Shaju.”
Sheeba Chadha, 53, has always spelt out entire scripts with her expressive face.
Her subtlety has served as a stamp of excellence on projects such as Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015; she plays an overbearing aunt who inserts herself into the couple’s life), Pagglait (2021; a grieving mother now living with her dead son’s wife), and Talaash (2012; a sex worker entangled in a police investigation).
“That’s very humbling to hear, but that’s a lot of pressure,” she says, laughing. “So often, as actors, we don’t have the outcome in our control. We may also say yes to projects we are not very happy with creatively, for various reasons.”
That certainly isn’t true of this year.
In addition to Bait, which explores Muslimhood in present-day London through a cast, plot and screenplay that are scintillating, Chadha plays Gertrude, mother of Hamlet, in a film adaptation of the Shakespearean play released in the US this month; Riz Ahmed plays her son again, this time in the role of the conflicted titular prince.
Chadha is also set to play Manthara, the hunchback maid who instigates Queen Kaikeyi against Ram (Kaikeyi is one of three queens married to Ram’s father, King Dasharatha), in this November’s big-budget release, Ramayana. She has added layers to this notoriously disliked one-note character, she says, and hopes that audiences will respond to them.
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Chadha has had a difficult tryst of her own with motherhood, as single parent to her now-grown daughter “and best friend”, Noor. In a world of shrinking communities and no village to help raise a child, it is becoming harder for parents and children to navigate the world, she has said.
Chadha was raised in the Delhi of the 1970s. She fell in love with theatre at 14. “I watched a musical called Main Ladli Maina Teri by Sheila Bhatia, and I remember being blown away by how celebratory it felt. There was energy, rhythm, performativeness. It felt alive in a way I hadn’t experienced before. Like a portal into another dimension.”
After school productions and local theatre, she moved to Mumbai, in the late 1990s, giving herself a month to find work or return home.
Her goal was never to be a cookie-cutter heroine, she says.
She wanted to work on projects that were made with care and told stories of real people, focusing perhaps on the single fatal flaw, the marked turning point, or the joys and disappointments that are inevitable and yet so varied in each life.
As it happened, her first significant role came within weeks, through a friend. Theatre actor Kenneth Phillips, who was working on a major screenplay at the time, told her the film was being cast, and she should audition. It turned out to be Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999); Chadha was cast as Aishwarya Rai’s cousin.
In the nearly 30 years since this turning point, there have been less-than-ideal projects, and occasional bouts of stress over what her future might hold.
If there’s one thing she could change about the industry, Chadha says, it would be this.
“Not knowing where the next gig will come from. Having no sense of consistency, not over the quality of projects, or the quantum of work. That is one thing I think most actors would wish to change,” she says. “And it never will.”
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The arrival of streaming platforms over the past decade has added new layers, to the industry and the uncertainty.
Blockbusters don’t always land. Formulas don’t tend to work as well.
“There’s no easy answer,” Chadha says. “The only way to deal with this is to make peace with it, because beyond a point, you can’t manufacture or orchestrate what will happen. One can only keep steady… though of course not everyone has the bandwidth, resources and drive to manage that, and it does take a lot out of you.”
She doesn’t get her validation from social media, which helps, Chadha adds. “That’s where younger people struggle more.” She prefers not to look back; if something gave her joy and satisfaction, that’s enough for her to move on to the next project.
She wishes one of her upcoming projects involved an interesting love story. “Love looks very different when you’re in the middle-ages than when you’re younger. So I would like to be in a surprising or tangential love story that explores what love looks like for people my age,” she says. “Or I would like to play a character who has led a transcendental life. Perhaps someone like Meerabai. Madness in the form of surrendering to the divine really captures my imagination.”
Something she’d never feature in: the hyper-male, patriarchal tale.
“It troubles me. We don’t need that,” she says. “Such films are intrinsically violent — not necessarily in action, but in their assumptions; in what they take for granted, what they demand, and what they consider normal. This comes from a flawed belief system. What we’re seeing now is a heightened projection of that. It’s also reflective of the times we’re living in. It feels seismic.”
