Shefali Shah has been in the industry for over three decades, but it’s with her show Delhi Crime that she found recognition in the leading space. The show has had three seasons and was amongst the first shows to have a female actor from the ’90s lead a successful series. Post the show, there were actors like Sushmita Sen, Raveena Tandon and Madhuri Dixit who also led their own successful shows. The actor admits that the recent times have seen a major shift for the better in terms of parts written for women.
Ask her if she feels proud to have been amongst the first ones to have brought about this change in the industry and she says, “Somebody else has paved the path for me. There is Shabana Azmi ji, Smita Patil ji who’ve all paved paths for us, the ones we are walking on. And we are more privileged in whatever place we are at because they’ve dealt with the struggle. If there’s something that I have dealt with that can help the future, it’s fantastic but that is not what I went out to do.”
Shefali Shah adds that she didn’t know the success the series would achieve. “It was not the plan but I am so glad it happened because it finally opened paths for women in every age group. Sadly, until then, it was only young women, and that too heroines. Uske alawa kya karna hai [with female actors], wo pata nahi. So, I’m glad that happened. If I’ve been able to make one step towards a lot of other actors having freedom to do the kind of work they do and getting their due, well it feels good,” she says.
Check out the full interview with Shefali Shah here:
The actor admits that a ripple effect of this confidence reflects in the younger generation of female actors too, having worked with someone like Alia Bhatt in Darlings. “They’re so focused and driven. They grant themselves credibility and they own up and say ‘yes I deserve it and I will get it’, which is so good. It’s because a lot of us have just spent time saying ‘no no, maybe I don’t [need this]’. If somebody behaved nicely with us, we would be like ‘thank you’. We’d never think that it’s only the rightful thing, the right behaviour. It’s commendable and that happened when I worked with Alia [in Darlings] or even with the girls in Delhi Crime [Huma Qureshi, Rasika Dugal, Sayani Gupta]. What phenomenal actresses all of them are. I love it when a woman owns her space and says ‘yes, I deserve to be treated well. I deserve this’. It’s commendable,” she ends.
