Kalki Koechlin craves to play more than just the ‘broken’ woman on screen: ‘There's pressure to do the same thing’

In an interview with Hindustan Times, Kalki Koechlin details why she would rather wait than be boxed into certain roles as an actor.

In 2009, when Kalki Koechlin played a student reeling from an MMS scandal, Chanda in Dev D, there was something captivating and refreshing to see a character who refuses to let society shame her into submission. Since then, Kalki has been the poster child for roles (That Girl in Yellow Boots, Margarita with a Straw, A Death in the Gunj) that are far from ordinary. But today, she tells Hindustan Times, she’s in danger of being typecast as a ‘broken’ woman on-screen, longing to do more than that. (Also Read: Kalki Koechlin says she wanted to ‘stab producer with fork’ after he asked her to get fillers: I held myself back)

Kalki Koechlin talks about why she's being picky about the roles she says yes to.

Kalki Koechlin on feeling pressured to repeat herself

Kalki, who most recently played a lawyer in the Tamil film Nesippaya, has a surprising answer when I ask her what kind of roles she is looking for at this stage of her career. “I don’t know how to answer that because I have no work right now (laughs),” she says candidly. After a beat, she reflects, “I think why I’m not doing anything is because I do want to wait for significant roles…quality roles. And those are not coming.”

The actor details that most of the characters offered to her lately are of ‘broken’ women, which is getting repetitive. “There’s a lot of pressure to do the same thing I’ve done, especially the sort of…broken family, broken wife or broken affair girl. There have been a lot of those offers. And there have also been a lot of guest appearances. And neither of these is exciting to me at the moment. So I’m being patient and finding other ways to spend my creative time,” she says.

Working in the web series Bhay - The Gaurav Tiwari Mystery

However, Kalki has an Amazon MX Player mini series called Bhay - The Gaurav Tiwari Mystery in the works that will be released soon. It’s a project that she admits she’s excited about. “I finished doing a show called Bhay, directed by Robbie Grewal and Arshad Sayyed. It’s a horror…but it’s a paranormal thriller really. It’s not your typical horror,” she says.

The actor also reveals that the most fascinating part of the series is that it’s based on a real person and incidents, “It’s based on a real person, Gaurav Tiwari, who was running this thing called the Indian Paranormal Society. His death was under suspicious circumstances. It’s a very fascinating story, and hopefully it’ll be a new kind of thriller for India. Other than that, I am not doing anything.”

Karan Tacker, Danish Sood, and Saloni Batra also star in the web series that's yet to get a release date.