The only best kind of marketing is the one that travels by word of mouth and Netflix’s new crime thriller CAT defines that. The series continues to garner attention even after a month and sees laudable performances by central actors Randeep Hooda, Hasleen Kaur, Geeta Agrawal Sharma, Suvinder Vicky, Pramod Pathak and Sukhwinder Chahal, supported by actors who speak a mix of Hindi and Punjabi. The plotline is formulaic—however, what sets the series apart is its nail-biting twists.
While Randeep’s performance is the highlight for being consistently stupendous, Hasleen has grabbed eyeballs with her role as Babita, a young police officer who has joined Punjab Police with an ambitious streak to curb crime. The actor shows a strong screen presence anchoring Babita’s character with her staid demeanour. Her de-glam rustic avatar makes one forget for a moment that she had been a former Miss India Earth! As the role finally marks her commendable arrival on the acting stage, we dialled the model-turned-actor to talk to her about her experiences in the industry. Sharing with us what got her interested in the series, Hasleen says, “I had a lot of belief in the storyline as it is very well written and the casting is superb. Honestly, I did not expect it to trend at No 1 in India. The response has been overwhelming!”
The 34-year-old actor plays a strict and plain Babita who helps catch perpetrators of crime. While she is earnest in her work, she is often let down by her peers and society for being a woman and also for being separated from her husband. Hasleen tells us how she prepared for the role, “The role challenged me as an actor. The Punjabi dialect was not easy to pull off as it changes after every 20km, if you travel the state. So being Babita required constant efforts to get into her skin. Sometimes, I would go so deep into her mind that it gave me headaches! To portray the firm side of Babita, I observed women in Punjab and Haryana closely. They are not soft spoken. They are tough and you can’t take them for a ride. Also, the minute you don a wardi, you start to naturally exude power,” Hasleen shares.
From crown to glory
The Binnaguri-born actor has spent most of her time in Delhi. An army kid, she made headlines after being crowned Miss India Earth in 2011, followed by a life at the runways. Later, she made her Bollywood debut with Karle Pyaar Karle (2014), which could not fetch the numbers at the box office. “After Karle Pyaar Karle, I made a conscious decision to go back to modelling. I just wanted to focus on myself and hone my acting skills further. During COVID, while we were locked in our houses, all that time gave me an impetus to read books, give auditions, and create a YouTube channel. I also started to self-tape monologues for my practice and share them with my family for feedback. I think that exercise coupled with right timing worked for me in bagging a role in the series,” she says.
The passion to excel has kept Hasleen going, all these years. “In our profession, one has to face a lot of rejections. The only way to cope with them is to not take them personally and keep working on yourself. Eventually, I also realised that there are pitfalls in a career; what you do at that time is what matters.”
Now that she has arrived on the acting stage with an impressive performance, she tells us how the unlearning happened on the sets of CAT under the aegis of its brilliant cast. “CAT taught me that most of the learning actually happens on the sets. After working with fine actors like Randeep, Pramod and Sukhwinder, I felt they were all pretty flexible performers, which is a quality to emulate. They can change themselves in an instant, depending on what the script demands.”
Hasleen further tells us that Randeep was an easygoing actor to talk to in between shots. “He would suggest how I could better my shot and experiment further. He didn’t come across as someone who is so focussed on his acting that he won’t pay any heed to his co-actors. The other actors were also very helpful,” she adds.Hasleen’s next is a rom-com titled Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar, starring Ranbir Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor in lead roles. Telling us what she looks for in a project before signing it, she says, “I try to understand the character I am being chosen for, its representation, and how important it is for the curve of the story.”
Being in films and fashion for a decade has made Hasleen an industry insider. She tells us that both the industries have evolved tremendously and have broken stereotypes pertaining to representation. “There’s a lot more work available now due to wider acceptability. We are ready to embrace people, irrespective of their shapes, sizes, and genders in the fashion industry. As far as films are concerned, we have new entrants coming from various backgrounds. Another important change is that movies have become more realistic—they are not just a figment of imagination or utterly fictitious.”
CAT is streaming on Netflix