Shabana Azmi: My broken wrist puts on some challenges, but I am happiest when I’m working

Actor Shabana Azmi talks about her broken wrist, and her international project, What’s Love Got to Do with It?, helmed by Shekhar Kapur

There is nothing that can stop Shabana Azmi from working, not even a broken wrist. In fact, the actor was back on set ready to shoot just two days after breaking her wrist. She says she believes the show must go on, and hopes to work till her last breath.

On the work front, Shabana Azmi was seen in Shekhar Kapur’s international project, What’s Love Got to Do with It?

“That is the way I have always been. Since the beginning, I have been encouraged through my upbringing that I was always made to believe that if I felt something strongly enough, I should go ahead and do just that,” Azmi tells us.

In fact, the advice not to go came her way when she decided to go to London to shoot Shekhar Kapur’s international project, What’s Love Got to Do with It? during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When I was told not to go, it was not coming from a place that ‘you are doing something wrong’, but in a way that it might be a hazardous thing to do. But I trusted my gut. Now, I am working with my broken wrist. Within two days after breaking my wrist, I had to come to Budapest to shoot for Steven Spielberg’s Halo. My family was worried and said ‘How can you travel? What can you do?’ But I wanted to do it. Now, I am managing to work with this. It’s putting some challenges on the crew, and it’s putting some challenges on me. But over the years, I have realised that I am happiest when I’m working. And that is what I would like to do always. I would like to die with my shoes on,” says the 72-year-old.

Opening up about her injury, she says, “This is not so bad. There was a time when I twisted my ankle, just before a show. My mother said to me, ‘you can’t cancel a show’. She was an actor herself. She said, ‘The show must go on’. And I have believed in that since then. At that time, I didn’t know it was a fracture. I thought it was a sprain. But I went up after taking injections. So. such things keep happening and you have to just carry on”.

In fact, when it comes to work, she was happy to reunite with Kapur on a project which examines the complexities that come with arranged marriage in a modern dating world which is ruled by apps.

“I worked with him after a long time, and didn’t feel that much time had passed at all. His strength as a director is that he makes the actor feel that it is a collaborative relationship with the director. He loves his actors, and cajoles and inspires them to do what it is that he wants to do. Although we were shooting in very extreme circumstances because Covid-19 pandemic was at its height, we had very strict protocols. When I left India for the shoot, everybody said I was making a mistake,” says the actor as she looks back at her experience.

“We finished the film in 40 days in the midst of the highest COVID pandemic in London. And it was an experience which will stay with me forever,” she ends.