HT Brunch Cover Story: Make it like Masaba!

It’s been a year of revelations for fashion designer Masaba Gupta, who recently turned actor, but that’s not the only reinvention she’s embraced

The last time I met Masaba Gupta was three years ago for an HT Brunch interview. Known for her candour, she had spoken with brutal honesty about growing up as a child born out of wedlock and facing bullying and bodyshaming from a very early age. But there were strict instructions to not ask any questions about her impending divorce from her then-husband of four years, producer Madhu Mantena.

Designer and actor Masaba Gupta says, “I am not going to take advice from anyone anymore, especially related to love and relationships. I want to be the master of my own mistakes!”; Styled by Dolla Baruah; Assistant stylists: Kareena Mishra & Komal Mulgaonkar; Make-up by Saba Shafique Khan; Hair by Deepa Jitendra Bambhaniya (The House of Pixels)

Today, the 33-year-old has no such riders. And although she is as candid as ever, she emanates a certain calmness that I had not seen the last time. A lot has changed, it seems, since 2019.

“The pandemic really transformed me in many ways,” she says, revealing that by April 2020, she had almost reached rock bottom. “Business was haywire, stores were shutting, employees were asked to leave... after a point, I got sick of being this weak person who was crying in bed all day. I got tired of not being able to take action. I was so paralysed by failure that I decided to overcome it. It took me two months, but I eventually did it,” says Masaba.

Masaba says, “I have realised my worth, and I have discovered that I am a survivor. I am like a cockroach”; Corset by Yash Patil; Jeans by Huemn; Necklace by Viange; Rings by Zohra; Nails by Nail Sutra (The House of Pixels)

The harshness of the lockdown also taught her one of the basic tenets of life: that nothing ever stays the same.

“There was this realisation that whatever you build today can be turned into dust tomorrow; all you can do is to keep doing your job,” says Masaba. “Now I have become more hardworking. I take much less shit from people. I have realised my worth, and I have discovered that I am a survivor. I am like a cockroach.”

Cockroaches, it is well-known, may be the only creatures to survive an apocalypse of any kind if ever there is one. So, as creepy as these insects seem, a comparison with them is actually a kind of compliment.

Masaba with her Masaba Masaba co-star Amariah Awantaye

But Masaba also compares herself to a chameleon. “I adapt. I have different personalities for different sets of people. Everyone—friends included—believes that I am this dramatic and overly emotional person who takes decisions with her heart. But they don’t know how I am in my workspace. As the Beyonce song goes: ‘I can be a beast or I can give you emotion…’. I will survive and I will adapt to situations, however difficult they may be,” she says.

Indeed, with beast mode on, Masaba 2.0 is more confident than ever, and also more relaxed.

Masaba on her business, personal and professional

Love and other demons

Masaba started her career as a fashion designer at 19 and went on to start her eponymous brand. Now, she has added a new feather to her cap, that of an actor. After essaying herself in a semi-fictional retelling of her life in Masaba Masaba, the hugely popular Netflix series that has been renewed for a second season, she also recently slipped effortlessly into the character and world of Saiba, a 34-year-old landscape designer navigating the minefield of dating apps in search of love, before finding it at the unlikeliest corner, in I Love Thane, the Dhruv Sehgal-directed segment in Amazon Prime’s anthology, Modern Love Mumbai.

“When I first got the script, I didn’t relate to Saiba’s quest for love. But I slowly realised that this is the reality of most women in cities, especially women my age, right now. We are constantly looking for a certain prototype and constantly dumbing ourselves down to fit one. It is a constant process of going from one disappointment to the other,” Masaba says.

Masaba says, “More than romance, a relationship is about companionship, friendship and being able to communicate without filters... I wish I had had this clarity in my 20s”; Outfit and shoes by Gucci; Jewellery by Tribe By Amrapali & Amama Jewels; Nails by Nail Couture by Janvi Matta (The House of Pixels)

Fortunately, like Saiba, Masaba now has a more mature take on love. “More than romance, a relationship is about companionship, friendship and being able to communicate without filters… I wish I had had this clarity in my 20s. I think in your 30s, you finally start to let go of the fairytale version of relationships. You begin to separate myth from reality. You realise that you create your own fairytale and that Prince Charming might just be a regular simple guy who can sometimes even be boring! Women don’t need a man to save them; it’s about time we get over that idea. It is an equal world, learn to save yourself and also pay for yourself!”

But, unlike the landscape designer she played, Masaba is averse to looking for love on dating apps. “Almost everyone is on dating apps today and people are open about it like never before. The idea of serial dating is cool now. The beauty of these dating apps is that you get to start with a clean slate and discover a completely new person. But, I really don’t think a bio can help me decide who I want to go out with.”

Also, she’s a celebrity. “The stranger might know me and have an agenda; that thought freaks me out. And anyway, I generally don’t find it safe.”

Masaba with Ritwick Bhowmick in Modern Love Mumbai

Being herself

Masaba may have played the fictional Saiba with ease, but being herself on-screen in Masaba Masaba was far more challenging, she reveals.

“There was a lot of detailing involved and I attended workshops to help me break into the character of Saiba. But I find it much harder to play myself,” says Masaba. “When you are playing a fictional character, you have a playing field. You can’t get out of that. But when I am playing myself, I can react in a thousand different ways. More than that, on the set of Masaba Masaba, there are times when I am reliving an incident or a phase of my life. It can be overwhelming. But mostly it is cathartic… I find closure then and there,” she reveals.

The show has also given her an objective perspective on her own life. “When I am playing Masaba, I am viewing her as a person outside me. It is not me but someone else. I am watching this girl and what she is going through. I know when she is going wrong, but I am just part of the audience. I have a very objective view of Masaba on the show. I always had this ability to dissociate, to switch off. Working on the show amplified it. My mom always points out that I forget pain very easily and move on. People often ask me how I coped with certain things. But honestly, my mind just blanks things out. I have no memory of friends who treated me badly or a failed fashion collection, or even of my marriage or divorce for that matter. It is bizarre!”

“My mom always points out that I forget pain very easily and move on,” says Masaba about mum, Neena Gupta

Perhaps this is a coping mechanism. But Masaba doesn’t know. “I don’t do it consciously. It is not that I am brushing things under the carpet. It’s just that those experiences don’t become a part of me.”

It could have something to do with her being an only child. “I have always been on my own, I would play on my own… I had imaginary friends! So, when I go through some bad experiences, which essentially involve other people or a relationship breaks, I find myself on my own again, and I move on.”

The parent trap

In Masaba Masaba, Masaba’s own mother, actor Neena Gupta, was her co-star. It can’t be easy to share screen space with such a commendable actor. “But she is very categorical that on set we are just two actors. She didn’t want to be my mom there. She wanted to see how I react as an actor,” discloses Masaba.

Why did she decide to get into acting and finally follow in her mother’s footsteps? Three years ago, while talking to me about her childhood as the daughter of legendary West Indies cricketer Sir Vivian Richards, she had mentioned her love for sports, instead. “I got majorly into sports to exhaust some of my energy,” she had said.

“My dad [Vivian Richards] taught me that no matter where you come from, it doesn’t stop you from going where you need to,” reveals Masaba

Today, she reveals why she quit tennis, a sport she had pursued professionally. “I failed as a sportsperson because I had put on myself an unnecessary pressure to be as great as my father,” she confesses. “Interestingly, now that I have taken up acting, people tend to compare me with my mother. But now my validation comes from the fact that I am an established designer and entrepreneur, so I can do this with a much more relaxed mind. I am not doing this to put food on my table. I can pick and choose what interests me. Also, I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. And when you don’t have the pressure to prove a point and you are doing something out of sheer love, you tend to do a better job of it.”

Masaba strongly believes that timing is crucial. “I am so glad that acting hadn’t happened to me 10 years back. I would not have landed anything substantial… maybe would have ended up playing some prop character, if at all. It was a different space back then. There were a bunch of five-six heroines that one would pick from,” she reflects. “Today, OTTs are opening up newer doors. Masaba Masaba would have never happened without this OTT boom. It is not a theatrical release. Neither is Modern Love. People are interested in seeing people like themselves on OTTs. People don’t want their icons to be aspirational or persons they don’t have anything in common with. Today, it is all about being relatable and hence there is a huge scope for actors like me who don’t essentially look like conventional heroines.”

Acting was always at the back of her mind, Masaba insists. She was smitten by the world very early on in her life. “I have a lot of great memories from my mom’s movie sets. Somewhere deep down, I wanted to be a part of that world. But seeing my mom go through what she did had put me off the idea… I thought the industry had no respect for real talent. My mom is an NSD graduate and she would tell me stories about the time she was made to play a beggar, and that too not the lead bhikhari but a background bhikhari! ” she guffaws.

A look at Masaba’s career

Work in progress

Although she finds being on film sets meditative and wants to pursue acting, she also wants to focus 100 per cent on her clothing line, House of Masaba and her soon-to-be-launched beauty brand. Masaba now also wants to get married and start a family. According to her, while stories are becoming more inclusive and progressive on-screen, the ground realities have hardly managed to keep up to the movie versions.

“Although divorce is much less of a taboo today in our country, having a child out of wedlock is still frowned upon. As a celebrity one might be made into a champion, but things have hardly become any better for regular women,” she points out.

But she wants to do everything at her own pace and on her own terms.

Masaba says, “Whatever you go through in your childhood comes out in your adult life in some shape or form. It is a constant work in progress.” (The House of Pixels)

“I have always been an intensely emotional person. But now I have stopped thinking of it as a weakness. I have turned it into my strength. I want to feel what I feel, and I don’t want people to stop me. If I am having a mood swing, I want to have it. I love my mood swings. Also, I have decided that I am not going to take advice from anyone anymore, especially related to love and relationships. I want to be the master of my own mistakes!” she chuckles.

Has her upgraded avatar managed to free herself from her backstory? Have the childhood scars finally healed?

“Both my mom and I have got so much love and acknowledgment from people that sometimes I feel I should not be talking about my childhood traumas. The scars have healed to a large extent, but whatever you go through in your childhood comes out in your adult life in some shape or form. It is a constant work in progress,” says Masaba.

From HT Brunch, July 16, 2022

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