First, there was Delhi Crime. Shefali Shah was a tough cop in this International Emmy Awards-winning show. Now, Shah plays Dr Gauri Nath, an ambitious neurosurgeon, in the medical thriller Human streaming currently on Disney+ Hotstar. The actor had once mentioned in an interview that she never wanted to be a superstar. But with such superlative performances, Shah has proven that it's a moniker she doesn't have to care about much.
"People’s views about my skill and craft changed after the success of Delhi Crime. Not that the industry didn’t love my work, but now I’m getting the kind of work I want to do. Whether I’m offered main leads or parallel leads, they are the kind of roles I have been itching for. Finally, scripts are being written keeping me in mind," Shah explains.
For an actor who had her big- screen debut with a small role in Ram Gopal Varma’s Rangeela in 1995, Shah has come a long way. She was a leading star of the small screen with shows like Hasratein and Banegi Apni Baat in the 90s cable television era. Delhi Crime stamped her arrival in the OTT space.
Shah is keen to talk about Dr Gauri Nath in Human. "I have my point of view and I mused upon every word in the script. After you start the role, there comes a point when you start understanding the character better. I had to learn a lot about technical things. I wanted to know the exact meaning of every term. While doing a surgery sequence, we even had a neurosurgeon present, guiding me through the operation."
Shah feels that OTT has done away with ageism in showbiz. "It has really changed my career graph in the industry. Some of the biggest shows on OTT platforms are women-oriented. I am a craftsperson of this era. The web-series format gives me hours to experiment, explore and indulge and understand my character’s nuances,” she explains. OTT has also forced directors and producers to look at actors differently. “There is nothing like a lead role. It is not about age. Every character is powerful."
Shah thrives in her craft because she owns every character she has ever been part of. When she mouths dialogues like 'I don’t deal with people, I deal with their pain', you forget that it's an actor and not a dedicated doctor sharing her daily challenges. The actor says that the effort that has gone into creating Dr Gauri Nath hasn’t been easy. In her words, Nath is unlike anyone she has ever met or heard about in
real life.
"The character took me by surprise," she admits. She says that many different complexities came into play while exploring Nath whose persona Shah compares to a lioness.
"But I thought, what if the good doctor is a deer instead? What if she is shy, fragile and vulnerable? There is no specific pattern to Gauri’s madness. She completely pushed me out of the boundaries of my comfort zone. Though her identity was written into the script in a different manner, I played her the way I wanted to. I took a risk. I knew that if I had played her like a lioness as envisaged by the writer, I would have been safe. But what was the point of being safe? Luckily the directors agreed with me. Gauri is complicated and extremely complex," she confesses.
Shah is bitten by the directing bug too. Recently she directed and acted in two short films, Happy Birthday Mummy Ji and Someday. "Directing can be addictive," she reveals.
So what’s next?
The second season of Delhi Crime will be out soon. Shah admits that the last year was her busiest. “I don’t think I have done so much work in my entire career.”