Sarika: Roles Of Playing Mothers Onscreen Kept Me Away From The Silver Screen

Actress Sarika is set to return to the silver screen this year. The actress will feature in Amazon Prime Video’s ‘Modern Love: Mumbai’, for Alankrita Shrivastava’s short film ‘My Beautiful Wrinkles’. She was last seen in ‘Baar Baar Dekho’ in 2016. 

During an interview with Indian Express, the actress talked about normalising ageism especially towards female actors in the industry. She went on to talk about how she appreciates well written characters and the reason behind saying yes to the short film. People may think that Sarika is picky about her characters, but in reality the actress came across very few ‘good roles’ in the past years. When Shrivatava went to her with a abstract coming-of-age film for a woman in 60s, it was an instant yes. 

Sarika then pointed out at the fact that as female actors enter 60s, the ‘mother roles’ are pasted on them. That formed the base of reason behind the actress staying away from the films, she said, “That has been happening for the longest time.”

Sarika added, “I remember when I got back to acting, the first 3-4 films that came to me were like ‘oh! she is back, ab isko iski maa bana do, uski maa bana do‘. They wanted me to play mother to heroes who were three years younger than me. This is a very old-age thing. Now, thanks to OTT, where the financial risk is not there, people are ready to try out different things. We have better scripts, and much wider audience thanks to OTT in our country. So, you can put it all out there, and that whole collection and distribution thing is not there. So we can be more honest and can bring out real stories. That’s the only thing that’s happening, but ‘woh tabhi bhi tha, abhi bhi hai’ (ageism when it comes to roles for female actors), and that’s is not a thing that we change.”

However, now that the actress is back on sets, Sarika plans to stick around. “As actors, you want to do more work, play different roles, but you’re also totally dependent on directors. When I have got good offers, I’ve never missed an opportunity to do that. As actors, we don’t know what we will be offered, but the good thing is that in the past few years, it has become so much more interesting. Also, there is such diversity in directors today, which results in diversity in content. So, we are catering to everybody out there.”

It is not new for older actresses to start getting mother roles rather than leading lady in the entertainment industry. But with the reforms and OTT platforms uprising, it is expected for the platonic view to change. From the trailer, Sarika seems to be a recipient of young man’s love. When asked about how she feels about being a romantic lead at the age, she said, “I don’t care. If I get a good film to do, I’ll do it. Tomorrow if someone offers me a role of a fruit-seller and if it is a good role, I’ll do that too.”

“It is just one of the roles. You can’t say ‘arre love story mil gayi iss age mein, meri toh nikal padi’, it is really not like that. It is about a good role that you want and feel ‘yes, I got it!’. I crave to work on good scripts, with good directors because that is what makes me happy.” Concluded the actress.