In an interview with Zoom, Jason Shah was asked what he thought of Segal’s performance, the trolling over which hasn’t stopped since the series debuted on Netflix on May 1.
The actor said he wasn’t part of the briefing between her and Bhansali, so he wouldn’t know what exactly transpired, but the relentless trolling makes him feel “sorry” for Segal.
As a director to actor, maybe that was what they were going for.
I have heard a lot about this, honestly, I feel a bit sorry for her.
“Somebody who doesn’t want to be a tawaif, she doesn’t talk like a tawaif, she doesn’t walk like a tawaif.
Actor Jason Shah, who played the villainous Cartwright in Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, feels bad for the trolling his co-star Sharmin Segal has been receiving for her performance in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s debut streaming series, but wonders if it was a deliberate choice to make the character Alamzeb muted in her emotions. While Bhansali’s debut series on Netflix has received brickbats for inaccuracy and glorification of courtesans, Sharim Segal’s performance has been widely criticised, with her scenes and dialogue delivery being a constant in meme pages on the internet.
In an interview with Zoom, Jason Shah was asked what he thought of Segal’s performance, the trolling over which hasn’t stopped since the series debuted on Netflix on May 1. The actor said he wasn’t part of the briefing between her and Bhansali, so he wouldn’t know what exactly transpired, but the relentless trolling makes him feel “sorry” for Segal.
“I think it shows that you can have the greatest director there… But, I wasn’t there so I don’t know what was spoken. As a director to actor, maybe that was what they were going for. I am not sure. I have heard a lot about this, honestly, I feel a bit sorry for her. In certain scenes to me it felt like something needs to happen, but it is a different kind of role… To be honest, to keep that one tone, whether it is me smacking her on the table or Tajdar dying, maybe that’s what they were going for,” he said.
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Shah recalled how Sharmin Segal had revealed that she underwent 16 rounds of auditions for the part, and wondered maybe “that’s what they were trying to get ultimately.” The actor added, “I definitely felt that the character could have intensified a lot more, there could have been a lot of different ups and downs, and the graph could have been very different because you had the opportunity, the scope to do so much. But if that’s what they were going for and accomplished, great. If not, then it is what it is.
“Ultimately, your viewers are going to be your feedback. People have said, ‘I hate you’ to me, because to them I have done a good job. For me that’s mission accomplished coming in as an antagonist, you want them to get that anger towards your character.”
Previously, Bhansali defended Sharmin’s casting and said she was exactly how her character Alamzeb should have been on the show. “Somebody who doesn’t want to be a tawaif, she doesn’t talk like a tawaif, she doesn’t walk like a tawaif. Her face had innocence, whereas all the others had lived life, they had survived manipulation and mental games. You needed somebody with a fresh, innocent quality to her… I felt that Sharmin was the right choice for Alam not because she’s my niece,” he had told India Today.
The trolling of Sharmin was so relentless that the actor had to disable the comment section on her Instagram page and hasn’t so far participated in any post-release interviews, even as some of her co-stars have spoken abouther, including Shekhar Suman, who defended her performance in a backhanded manner, and said that it was supposed to be muted.
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Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, based on the courtesans of Lahore and the life of red-light district in undivided India, also starred Manisha Koirala, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditi Rao Hydari, Richa Chaddha and Sanjeeda Sheikh.
