What to watch on Amazon Prime Video | Pooja Bhatt: 'I was asked on Bigg Boss "Why are you acting like a school principal?"'

Pooja Bhatt with Loveleen Mishra in Big Girls Don't Cry, streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Pooja Bhatt returned to acting in 2021, after a gap of 21 years, with the web series Bombay Begums. As Rani Irani, she fought patriarchy at her workplace while struggling to balance her personal life. There was strength and vulnerability on display. In Amazon Prime Video’s latest show Big Girls Don’t Cry (BGDC), the 52-year-old actress plays the role of Anita Verma who is the principal of an all-girls boarding school. Verma, too, is a woman of great strength, but creator Nitya Mehra wanted her to come across as a flesh-and-blood character. Bhatt tells us about the show and why she prefers to keep mum about future professional commitments. Edited excerpts from a conversation:

Unlike the creator of the show Nitya Mehra, you didn't go to boarding school. What do you recall of your school days?

I went to a Parsi school in Mumbai called Avabai Framji Petit Girls High School. It had a glorious campus compared to the other schools housed inside buildings. In my mind, I am half Parsi because that was my upbringing. My badge said ‘work is worship’ and that has remained with me. When I do something, I am either all in or I am not. There’s no halfway.

Nitya has spoken about how the main theme of the show is the question ‘who are you’. That was the emphasis in my school as well, to develop the persona from the inside. There was disdain for any display of wealth. You could not carry a pen or a tiffin box which was over the top. If anything was allowed to shine, it was you.

I had a number of cousins who went to boarding schools and I would go to the station to wave goodbye to them. I felt I was being deprived of this experience. I grew up gorging on Malory Towers and St Clare’s and fantasising about midnight feasts. It was so alien to us, but we made it ours. And now we have our own Malory Towers with Big Girls Don’t Cry!

Whether it was Rani Irani in Bombay Begums or now Anita Verma in BGDC, you have played strong women who have a vulnerable side. Are you drawn to such roles?

I think the roles choose you; you don’t choose them. I’d be lying if I said that I went out and I found Rani Irani or Anita Verma. The roles found me. When that happens, you should have the gumption and capacity and the heart to say yes.

Being away from the camera for 21 years and garnering and gathering life experiences has added to my persona and the woman I am today, which gets communicated. I think the show is so authentic because Nitya and the other co-directors have lived this life. There is no alternative to a lived life or to a lived experience.

I played a criminal psychologist in R Balki’s Chup: Revenge of the Artist who was very different from Rani or Anita, but she had an irreverent kind of attitude. There is a little bit of me in all these people and yet there is none.

What did you like about playing this character on screen?

What’s unique about Anita Verma is that she is not stripped of her femininity or her sensuality. That in itself is so refreshing because there is this certain idea that women over a certain age are not meant to be remotely sensual in any way. That does not mean doing a love scene. Sensuality is in the way you wear your hair or pick up your glass. But in our shows, women over a certain age are not sensual at all and women under a certain age are only sexualised! This is a role that does neither and that is so refreshing.

What’s happening next?

I am old-school and extremely discreet. Even though I am absolutely candid about my personal life, when it comes to work, I don’t open my mouth unless my makers have told me to. I have lived quietly with BDGC for one year! So, when I was asked in Bigg Boss why I am acting like a principal, I would think, ‘just you wait, you don’t know Anita Verma is coming along!’ (laughs)