Actress Sheena Chohan is currently garnering accolades for playing a quiet-tempered Christian girl named Jasmine in Disney’s newly released ‘The Trial’, directed by Suparn Verma, where she comes under intense scrutiny in a court-room cross-examination by Kajol.
Sheena, who was launched in the South by Mammootty and nominated Best Actress at the Shanghai and Dubai Film Festivals for her lead part in ‘Ant Story’, a film bought by Netflix, had to do character studies of real women at the churches in Bandra to adopt the mild-mannered character Jasmine, who Kajol unleashes her ferocious sharp wits on, in the series which released on July 14th on Disney Hotstar.
Talking about her role, she said, “I always look for a real person when I’m getting into the skins of my characters - searching for what is the character’s need and what drives them. It takes me weeks but as soon as I’ve found that, I’ve nailed the character, and in this case it was so important to have done my in-depth research because once I was on that witness stand with Kajol’s character grilling me - you cannot have things planned – we were both just in the moment and creating. What’s hilarious is to have such a super star as Kajol ma’am, in character, tough as hell, laying into my quiet and scared character, but then as soon as Suparn Verma Sir called cut, it was like the atmosphere totally lightened up and there was the real Kajol – no longer pressuring and pushing me for answers, but full of smiles and joy – it was a big relief but all of that work creating the character paid off in those moments!”
Sheena recalls telling Kajol how much she admired her work and the positive effect she’s had on the country. Sheena told Kajol the story of how she’d used Kajol’s character from ‘DDLJ’ in her TedX talk about the power of art to positively affect the world.
Sheena added, “I learnt a lot from Kajol! She’s an inspiration. I feel like every project and actor I work with challenges me, because what you have to do is create a human being! You have to be an observer – not of other actors, but of life. I love stories and so the idea of being a part of a story that I love and helping tell that is exciting to me and I think that it’s a worthy way of spending one’s life and I know Kajol feels the same.”
She can next be seen opposite Subodh Bhave where she plays the female lead in the Hindi biopic ‘Sant Tukaram’, directed by Aditya Om and then in the Hollywood film ‘Nomad’, which equalled the Guinness Record for shooting in the most countries and on all seven continents. Her film ‘Justice’, where she plays one of the lead roles alongside Rajshri Deshpande, is being released to international film festivals.
