Actress Plabita Borthakur, who made her acting debut with Lipstick Under My Burkha after playing a cameo role in Aamir Khan and Anushka Sharma’s PK, is currently receiving praises and appreciation for her character in the recently released web series, Escaype Live. The actress, who plays the role of ‘Fetish Girl’, told News18.com, during a candid conversation that she was initially nervous about her character and apprehensive whether she could pull it off. Besides giving us an insight into her character, Plabita, who hails from Assam, also shared her views on north-eastern representation in Bollywood. The Bombay Begums actress revealed the kind of racist questions she had to answer in her life earlier.
Excerpts from the interview:
Tell us about your character in Escaype Live:
At first, I was a little nervous about it. I didn’t know if I would be able to pull it off and be able to do justice to it. But thankfully, the makers believed in me, and eventually, I came to believe in myself to be able to play it. My character’s name is Fetish Girl and she is also one of the users of the app, Escaype Live. In the story, we see these different users of the app, their own stories, and why they do what they do. We see Fetish Girl on the app and we also see a lot of her personal life about what she is like when she’s not on the app.
How did you prepare for the role?
There was a lot of preparation needed for this role because it was not like any girl next door role. It was not only about me as an actor, just finding the emotions and enacting them but it was a lot of physicalities involved in the character. So I had to do a lot of hours on a diet, a lot of workouts, dance rehearsals, choreographic sessions, and of course, reading sessions with the director because I had to figure out what kind of a tone will this character picked. What are her mannerisms when she’s on video, and how would she move, what is the body language? So all I had to work on all of that and it was challenging but quite fun.
The show is based on the toxic sides of social media? Have you ever faced something like that or had to deal with the negativity on social media?
Not really, because I have always somehow managed to keep myself a little away from it. It’s not a conscious effort, honestly, to keep myself away from it, but I have. I like to make use of my time just the way I want to without browsing through social media all the time. I don’t count how many followers I have, and I don’t really care if it’s increasing or not. But in spite of being this person, social media does have its effect. I’ve had people telling me that I must be more active, make more posts, and make more use of the followers I have. Even though I mostly don’t agree with it, I keep thinking, ‘oh, what if I’m wrong, and everyone else is right?’
After having done films and series like Lipstick Under my Burkha and Bombay Begums, do you feel you are getting proper appreciation and recognition?
I don’t know, I would like to think so. I did get a lot of appreciation for my role in Lipstick Under my Burkha and also Breathe and Bombay Begums and so I think with every new role, I get a few newer and different kinds of
audiences. It’s really nice to have people appreciating what I do because we are artists, we do it for other people and if somebody is able to relate to my character, it’s a good reward. But I don’t really think much about what kind of recognition I’ve got or not got I just really hope that with Escaype Live, more audience watches me.
Are you getting to do the kinds of roles you always wanted to do and explore yourself as an actor?
I’ve been very lucky, I would say, to have been given very different kinds of characters to play. All my roles have been starkly different from each other. That is one of the most exciting parts about being an actor, right? Because you’re like playing different people, you’re playing something that you’ve not played before. That’s where I would say, I really feel fortunate.
When it comes to the representation of northeastern characters in Bollywood, do you think that there is enough authenticity or things are changing right now on that front?
We are taking a step for sure. But I do feel that we still don’t have enough northeastern characters in mainstream films and shows. Of course, with OTT, a lot of new different kinds of projects happening but I still feel we have a long way to go.
Do people even realize that you are also from the northeast because there are certain stereotypes in their minds and you don’t adhere to those?
I get a little annoyed when they say, ‘Oh, you are from the northeast’, or ‘but you don’t look typically northeast.’ But I’m like, have you been there? There are people who look different. Not everyone would look only the way you are expecting them to look. Somehow I do get that a lot. And I do get a little annoyed because I feel that there is very little knowledge about the northeast that people have outside.
Especially when people ask me is it safe to be there? Or what kind of clothes do you guys wear in Assam? When I first came to college, these are the kinds of questions that I used to get- Do you wear jeans there? Do you wear normal clothes? What kind of food do you eat? Nowadays, it’s not like that, again, thanks to social media. We have so much more awareness because we see people from everywhere. But earlier, a lot of people asked me if I needed a passport to be in India.
