Tell Shernaz Patel that everybody thought that she had given up acting and she laughs.
“That’s a huge misconception. It’s just that I haven’t been offered too much work. I try to take up whatever suits me,” she said.
Right now, her centre of focus is a new show Angrezi Mein Kehte Hain (on NDTV Imagine) where Shernaz plays a teacher teaching a classroom of varied students the essentials of the English language.
“I just don’t fit into the saas-bahu shows that the television scenario is full of. So I just kept myself away from it. But when Siddharth Basu came up with this concept, I simply couldn’t say no,” Shernaz said.
Is she open to other television shows, “Oh absolutely. I have never had any sort of reservations about television. If there’s a good project which I like, I am game for it.”
Likewise for films too, “I did do some films after Black but they didn’t do so well, so I wasn’t noticed.”
Black was sort of a life changing experience for her, “Black was an experience of a lifetime. Everything was perfect-the cast, direction, script. It was like a fairy tale.”
But one wonders how she portrayed the character of a distraught mother so beautifully when she is still single in real life. “I have been asked this before. But honestly, I am a woman with a natural maternal instinct. Also, emotions are universal. I don’t have to be a mother to portray one,” Shernaz quipped.
How was it working with Amitabh Bachchan? “He’s my kind of actor. Being a theatre actor, I like to rehearse well before the final take. It was comforting to see that he did likewise. Also, all of us were so focused in our work that there was no star system as such,” she said.
Right now, she can’t stop gushing about her English film Little Zizou. “It is a mad comedy and has the entire Parsi ensemble as its star cast with Boman Irani leading the pack. I am really waiting for its release,” she signed off.