Parineeti Chopra is thankful she wasn't a mom while playing a mother losing her child in Shaque: 'I'd collapse'

Parineeti Chopra talks about playing a grieving mother in her debut web series, Shaque, which is streaming on Netflix.

Parineeti Chopra is back in front of the camera. Actually, the actor never left. While most actors take a breather during pregnancy and after childbirth, Parineeti was actually shooting an intense thriller while pregnant. Shaque, her maiden web series, released last week. Parineeti filmed parts of it in the early stages of her pregnancy. In a chat with Hindustan Times, the actor says she is glad she hadn’t given birth before the shoot, or she would have ‘cried in every scene’.

Parineeti Chopra in a still from Shaque.

‘A blessing in disguise’

Shaque stars Parineeti as a woman whose daughter is stolen from the crib hours after her birth, and she dedicates years to finding her, becoming almost obsessed and paranoid in the process. Parineeti was filming Shaque when she found out she was pregnant in 2025. A big part of the filming had already taken place. She recalls, “It was some sort of blessing in disguise that I had just started my journey at that time. I didn’t have that real-life experience to draw from. Thank God for that, because the kind of mom I am, it would have been unbearable for me to say those lines and do those scenes. I would not be able to differentiate too much.”

She says that had she been a new mother herself at the time, performing would have been hard for her. “When I think about Shaque and the things that are happening to this character, I feel unbearable pain. I think I would completely collapse. I would cry in every scene. I wonder what performance that would have been,” adds the actor.

On maturing as a mother

Parineeti gave birth to her son, Neer, on 19 October last year. The actor says that the time she has spent as a mother has helped her mature now. She explains, “Today, if I have to enact a role, I will approach it with much more strength because I am starting to settle into this role of mine as a mother.”

Parineeti married politician Raghav Chadha in 2023 at Udaipur’s Leela Palace. They welcomed their first child, a son, in October 2025, sharing his first pictures on social media a month later.

About Shaque

Shaque stars Parineeti Chopra in her web series debut, alongside Jennifer Winget, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Soni Razdan, Sumeet Vyas, Harleen Sethi, Anup Soni, and Dhruv Chowdhury. Created by Siddharth P Malhotra and directed by Rensil D’Silva, the series began streaming on Netflix on September 24.