Masaba Gupta: I thought you have to be certain height, skin colour to be a star

A known and established name in the fashion world, Masaba Gupta tried her hands with acting last year with great results. Her debut was a semi autobiographical web series, Masaba Masaba was received well and though there are upcoming season planned for it, the designer-turned-actor wants to branch out to doing hard core fictional stories.

“I don’t want to play myself on screen anymore except for Masaba Masaba. I want to make sure that whatever role I choose to do, I can show the many layers and dimension that I can potentially have. What I really want to do next is an out and out intense drama and I really want to do action. That is my pick. I am going to pick stuff that will make me uncomfortable. I want to do something that shakes me up and shakes people up,” shares Gupta.

The 32-year-old, who is the daughter of actor Neena Gupta, says she is looking forward to 2021and taking up new acting projects.

“I am really excited to doing more work. A lot of people think I don’t want to fiction but I totally do. I don’t want to take up everything and anything that comes my way. I need to enjoy it. I have to give my label the respect it deserves because I am here because of it. And for as long as I can, I will continue to juggle, I enjoy multitasking and working hard. I really want to make sure neither acting nor fashion suffers,” she says.

While acting has always been her first love, Gupta reveals it was because of her mother that she didn’t take up that as a profession and went for fashion designing. Also, she feels she had preconceived notions about how actors in Bollywood have to be.

“I have always believed that you have to be a certain height, certain skin colour, certain look to be a star. Whenever you saw them they were well turned out, they made no mistake, and they were just God. I think it is the democratization of stars that we see today. We can look at them and be like, ‘hey that person looks like my cousin or reminds me of my mum’ but they are really big stars,” Gupta says.

She also asserts how now there is no escaping a good actor, and a bad actor either and she wants to be known as a good actor.

“You have to be good in front of the camera otherwise people will reject you right away, that is something I was waiting to see for a long time. I don’t know how to tell a good script from a bad script. I have a good gut and intelligent enough to trust my gut. Also, I have been an audience and I know what people like to watch,” she says.