Inside Wamiqa Gabbi’s golden streak from ‘Jubilee’ to ‘Khufiya’ in 2023

Gabbi will surely not have to bother with Instagram if she stays in form like she has in 2023. Her golden streak started on February 3 with the Punjabi-language theatrical release Kali Jotta, in which she plays a lawyer tracking down her beloved schoolteacher who has disappeared. The film was a box-office success. On the same day, Vishal Bhardwaj’s short musical film Fursat, starring Gabbi and Ishaan Khattar, was released on YouTube.

In April, came the yesteryear Hindi cinema-based Jubilee, in which she played the enchanting courtesan-turned-starlet Niloufer. The next month, she starred in Kumararaja’s characteristically wacky romantic short film Ninaivo Oru Parava (Memory is But a Bird), arguably the best entry in Modern Love: Chennai.

Through September and October, Gabbi was once again all over the OTT space. First came Bhardwaj’s SonyLIV series Charlie Chopra & The Mystery Of Solang Valley, in which she played a spunky detective, the eponymous Charlie. Then she played the pivotal role of Charu in Bhardwaj’s spy thriller Khufiya, on Netflix, where she held her own against Tabu.

For over a decade, Gabbi has been toiling in Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu films until she got her due. “I never thought I would see such a time in my life,” Gabbi says. “I had been dreaming for this, maybe not this, but like, some progress towards sensible and meaningful roles and working with good directors, for the last 10 years.”

This must seem like quite a peak when Gabbi looks at it from her vantage point in 2013, when she moved to Mumbai from her hometown Chandigarh. Born to Punjabi author Govardhan Gabbi and school principal Raj Kumari Kaushal, Gabbi is a first-generation actor. A career in films began when a tutor at her dancing school in Chandigarh happened to be the local coordinator for junior artists during the shooting of Imtiaz Ali’s 2007 film Jab We Met.

“I was asked if I want to play a sister in Kareena-Shahid’s film,” Gabbi recalls. “Well, why not?” Jab We Met was followed by bit roles in Love Aaj Kal, Mausam and Bittoo Boss. She landed her first lead role in the teen drama Sixteen. By the time of its release, she had moved to Mumbai.

“I know many artists, writers, directors, actors, production designers, cinematographers who come to the city to fulfil their dreams, love Bombay and be loved by Bombay,” Gabbi reflects. “But few get that. I am glad all this is happening to me, but I also know there are prettier girls than me out there. Maybe, they didn’t find the right people or the right people didn’t find them.”

She solemnly recalls her father telling her of his friend’s daughter who had also moved to Mumbai at the age of 19-20 to try her luck in showbiz. She returned home in her late 40s when she couldn’t do anything substantial in her career.

Against that shadow lurking in the back of her mind, she has become wary of celebrating success. For her first six to seven years in Mumbai, she did not make any progress in Hindi productions. Meanwhile, a healthy career bloomed in her first language Punjabi, while she tried her luck in Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu productions.

Among these, Basil Joseph’s Godha, in which she played the lead role of a wrestler, was acclaimed. Yet, Gabbi was not getting the kind of opportunities she was aiming for.

“At the time, I was not fully in touch with my craft,” Gabbi recalls. “I acted superficially. The satisfaction was skin deep. I got a little popularity, but all the roles were feeling similar. I was constantly getting rejected in Hindi. I thought maybe I won’t amount to anything. That’s when I decided I will just do whatever work I’ll get in Punjabi and travel the world.”

It was when she had lost heart and contemplated quitting showbiz that she auditioned for Vishal Bhardwaj’s Midnight’s Children series and was shortlisted for the lead role. Bhardwaj sent her to a three-day workshop with casting director and acting mentor Atul Mongia. “That workshop opened windows in my brain,” Gabbi says. “I realized how important it is to work on myself. My life slowly started changing.”

As luck would have it, Bhardwaj’s Midnight’s Children did not materialize. The Salman Rushdie novel was adapted by Mira Nair with a different cast. Covid-19 entered the picture and brought life to a standstill. Like many people we know, she “found time to look inwards.” She sought solace in Osho. A bad breakup followed.

“I found new perspective as I went down a spiritual path,” Gabbi says. “Negative thoughts like jealousy and resentment, like, why is that person more successful when I am more deserving, disappeared. I realized my happiness cannot just be about big films and shows and professional validation.”

Such self-satisfaction might make one less ambitious, but Gabbi has that covered. “I am not acting for my peace and mental well-being,” she reasons. “Peace I should get from not doing anything. Acting and career is not my life, they are just a part of it. I act because I can act, and I like acting, but tomorrow, if I am not successful in it, I have other things to find happiness from.” These other sources of happiness include her six dogs.

All’s well that ends well. While Midnight’s Children didn’t work out, Bhardwaj booked her discovery for successive projects, while Motwane picked her for Jubilee. Her upcoming projects include the Tamil film Genie, co-starring Jayam Ravi, and a Hindi production, co-starring Varun Dhawan and Keerthy Suresh, and directed by Jawan director Atlee’s assistant Kalees.

“What I most want to do, however, is an epic love story, something like Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam,” Gabbi says. “A character whose life revolves around love as I give priority to love the most.”

Oddly enough, the love stories she has headlined so far have featured troubled relationships: an unhappy marriage in Maalai Naerathu Mayakkam; a doomed romance in the web series Grahan; a relationship involving memory loss in Modern Love: Mumbai. The role closest to her personality, Gabbi says, is that of Charlie Chopra: “The humour, the Punjabiness, her bravery and swag is very me.”

Holding her together in her Mumbai journey so far has been her father whom she calls her “most honest critic”. Her father, she says, had predicted she would be an actor 15 minutes after she was born. “My eyes were wide open, excited, looking here and there, and my father said, this one will be a drameybaaz,” Gabbi says. “He introduced me to the world of films, theatre, songs, dance. My father backed my decision to move to Mumbai, and supported me throughout my journey, so I would not have to sacrifice my dignity and self-esteem for work.”

Today, she is over the moon when she recalls her parents arriving in Mumbai, a month back, encountering hoardings of Khufiya and Charlie Chopra, while travelling to her home from the airport. She muses how her relationship with them has evolved over the years.

“Maybe, because my father was an intellectual and a writer, I always gave him more importance over my mother, but in the last three-four years, I have realized I want to become like my mother,” Gabbi muses. “My mother has so much acceptance in life. She is so content with whatever she has in life, always at peace, and she finds humour in anything and laughs the most. It’s very hard to be that.”