MUSBA HASHMI chats up Tu Mera Hero fame MADHURI SANJEEV about her role in &TV’s Gudiya Humari Sabhi Pe Bhari, challenges of being a new entry in the show and her life experiences
She is sweet, charming and bewitching, somewhat opposite to her onscreen character, Uma Devi aka Harbheji in &TV’s Gudiya Humari Sabhi Pe Bhari. Meet Madhuri Sanjeev, who has enthralled the audience all these years with her stupendous acting skill.
Dressed in a vibrant colourful saree with a bindi dazzling on her forehead, Sanjeev will prove to be a sure shot entertainer in the show.
“I play Harbheji. She belongs to a family of dacoits and was forcefully married off at a very young age. Hence, she was never able to get along well with her husband. After her sister-in-law passed away, she took the responsibility of her son and is like a mother figure to him. She has two kids of her own — an overweight daughter and a mentally challenged son. She fears that her children won’t get their due in the property so she tries to convince her sister-in-law’s son that he can’t marry anyone and he is a brahmachari. I won’t call it a negative character but there are shades of grey to it. She is a kind hearted woman, but for the sake of her children she does all this. To cut it short, the character is very real and more often than not we all have come across such people in our lives so it is exciting to play such a character,” Sanjeev tells you.
Taking over a show when it is already running for a while and make a place for your character in the hearts of the audience is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea. “When you enter an already established show, it does require a lot of hard work and dedication. Making people love a new entry is challenging, more so when your character has shades of grey. It comes with a lot of apprehensions too, but that is exactly the job of an actor and you have to live up to it. I am doing my best to look different from the other characters,” Sanjeev, who debuted with Nukkad in 1987, explains.
Acting, she says, is not an easy job, however it is a very prestigious one. One gets to live a lot of different characters in life. “When you play a character, at a certain point of time, you have to start behaving like it. You have to start thinking in a way in which your character thinks. It is just overwhelming,” she tells you. Acting is more than just enacting somebody, she adds.
“Whenever we have enacted an intense or emotional scene, it does take us sometime to get out of that zone even after the director calls it cut. Our directors and producers too, understand the fact and try and shoot lighter scenes later that day —that are not emotionally exhausting. Sometimes when a scene is too heavy or emotionally demanding, it takes us hours to get back to normal,” Sanjeev tells you.
Sanjeev’s association with TV is not less than 33 years old and till date she has enjoyed every bit of her career.
“My husband was the reason behind my acting career. He, being a director himself, always supported my dreams of being an actor. Just like my character Harbheji, I too was married off at a young age. And fortunately because of such a supporting husband, I was able of become a part of the industry,” she asserts.
In all these years of career, Sanjeev has seen a massive change in how the industry works. “Back then, serials would work on a director’s name. Also directors used to call us to offer roles. And I have been fortunate enough to have worked with some of the best directors like Sudhir Mishra and Ravi Ojha to name a few. There were no auditions. We had very good equation with our directors. Now, directors are changed every 15 days, so we don’t get enough time to bond well with each other. But now, we are learning to change with time,” she tells you.
Commercialisation, she says, has taken over the industry now. “Things were far more real back then. But now things have become commercial. Simplicity is lost. Good and real stories are no longer a part of TV. I have a question for all the makers and producers of TV shows that in real life which saas-bahu lives like this? We should focus on showing our culture and tradition more, for which we are known worldwide. But, may be this is the new normal,” she says.
