Last year, Tisca Chopra turned director with her short film Rubaru, a film that met with much critical acclaim. The film revolves around what happens when an actor faces a personal and professional crisis including the insecurities of ageing and mental health.
While it’s a fictional story, Chopra feels that in India as well as in the West, there is a dearth of good roles for mature women, “Not just me, but even masterful actors like Meryl Streep have complained about the fact that roles dry up after a certain age for actresses. The reason for that is that most of the writing is done by men. They see women in stereotypical roles such as – this is a mother, this is a girlfriend, this is a wife, and it stays limited to that. We are small pieces in a jigsaw puzzle of a man’s life and for me.”
The actor explains that the idea of doing Rubaru was not to just tell her story but of many other female co-stars who she has worked with, “I have worked with many female actors and seen them deal with ageing, with the trauma of the fact that what was earlier a saleable quantity, is now no longer saleable. How they have had to reinvent in the face of that and to go from being a heroine to being an older character actor is traumatic. It is traumatic for men also but for women, it is much more. As they were in the first place largely looked upon as objects of sexuality for the male gaze. Rubaru deals with a lot of that.”
At the same time, the actor says that change is happening with storytelling evolving worldwide and women are no longer cast just for their beauty, “You can’t minimize the existence of women in cinema to just one point – of servicing a sexual need for the male protagonist. It is one very small part of what a woman can do. I think that shift is happening, and it is happening quite fast. I am really working to make that happen.”
Chopra also credits streaming platforms opening up a lot of avenues for female actors irrespective of their age, “What is happening in the world, even as we speak, there is the romantic young lead opposite a young leading man. But, the world has opened up so much with streaming platforms. You have a Mare Of Easttown with Kate Winslet. You have Sandra Bullock. You have Jennifer Aniston. You have Reese Witherspoon. You have Nicole Kidman. They are women who are certainly no spring chickens, and yet getting powerful, commanding roles. The leads in the series The Crown – Claire Foy and Olivia Colman, are so fabulous.”
She adds, “Even in India if you look at the series that have done extremely well, you will see this. If the story is great, then it doesn’t matter if the lead is male or female. The series Hostages was a superhit and I was headlining it. Neena Gupta is a prime example of somebody who is getting leading roles in all sorts of amazing work and her age is quite irrelevant. That is shattering existing norms and that is so exciting.”
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