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Palak Tiwari opens up on not being a ‘typical’ star kid: There is privilege but not enough of it
Palak Tiwari talks about feeling stuck in the middle for not being the typical star kid tag, living mum Shweta Tiwari's dream and why she never went into TV
Two years after her debut in Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan, Palak Tiwari returned to the big screen this May with the horror-comedy The Bhootnii. But the actor insists that her journey hasn’t been like any other industry kid. Being the daughter of actor Shweta Tiwari, Palak Tiwari is a star kid, but with her mum's stronger background being in TV, she wasn’t seen as any other star kid in the Hindi film industry.
“I was somewhere in this middle ground. I was like, ‘oh these people are calling me a star kid, but I'm not really a star kid. But also, I'm not a normal person who's auditioning in Andheri’. So, there was this privilege but not enough of it; there was also normalcy, but not enough of it too. It was very tough to find my place. In many ways, it was a privilege, but in many ways, I was typecast instantly. I did struggle with that, but I'm still trying to find my place,” she says.
Ask Palak if she feels she is somewhere living her mum’s dream of being on the big screen too with her journey, and she shares, “My mother got multiple chances to be on the big screen, but she was very content with television. It has given her and us so much. I have a house with a roof, and I have cars in my life due to it. My life is comfortable, my brother has lived a comfortable life, all because of television, so I will always respect and honour television. My mom was very happy there and aisa kabhi nahi tha unhe ki wo chod ke films mein jana hai. She really knows her roots, and she never was greedy in that sense.”
So, with a legacy of her mother behind her name, why did she decide to venture into films and not TV? “It wasn't like I didn’t want to do television because it’s a smaller medium, not at all. TV has given our industry such brilliant, versatile and phenomenal actors. But I felt that because of my mom's legacy in television, everything that there was to be explored, she had done that. So, there was nothing new for me to discover there,” she responds.
