Tabu walks us through her storied career and discusses the beauty of works that “never become dated”

Actors around the world can only envy Tabu’s filmography. Not only is the decorated Indian artist renowned for her complex, layered performances in critically acclaimed films in multiple languages, she has also worked with directorial heavy hitters like Mira Nair, Ang Lee, Mani Ratnam, and Gulzar. Though she occasionally dabbles in mainstream Hindi comedies and romantic dramas, Tabu has built a career that has expanded the reaches of  her craft. Whether she’s channeling Lady Macbeth and Gertrude in Maqbool and Haider (Vishal Bharadwaj’s groundbreaking adaptations of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Hamlet, respectively), tackling the devastated Punjabi villager who turns to terrorism after her fiancé and brother are racially profiled and attacked in Gulzar’s Maachis, or engaging in broad, goofy antics in the cult-classic comedy Hera Pheri, Tabu consistently leaves audiences wondering: How on earth did she do all of that?

The actor, who portrayed Bene Gesserit member Sister Francesca on HBO’s Dune: Prophecy (which just closed out its first season), says she doesn’t really know. In a recent interview with The A.V. Club, Tabu spoke about her lack of a formal acting process, her dinners with Dune castmates, and the Shakespearean adaptation she longs to be a part of in the future.  

The A.V. Club: Let’s start closer to the beginning of your career. In your very first scene in Gulzar’s Maachis (Matches), your character, Veera, is chatting and joking with your brother (Raj Zutshi) and fiancé (Chandrachur Singh) when suddenly the tone shifts. Veera spots a Jeep over the valley, watching her house. No one knows the significance of the Jeep, but its presence is sinister, and the film changes forever at that point. How did you feel reading that moment in the script and then performing it? 

Tabu: My god, this is a very heavy question. This is a very deep question, and I don’t know if I have answers to this. See, I was very, very young when I did Maachis. I wanted to work with Gulzar. I wanted to work in the kind of cinema that he made, where people were real, where I could be myself, I could express myself in the most genuine and true manner and not like the regular film heroines. When he gave me the script, I was too young to understand the relevance of it, the politics of it. I don’t even know if we can still comprehend or make any sense of anything that happens in the world. 

But [the story] was very, very close [to Gulzar]. It came from his heart, and for me, the emotional depth of the characters and what they were experiencing was what drew me to it. Just the fact that Gulzar has entrusted me with this character, who will finally bite cyanide and who will finally kill herself, was a responsibility. But for Gulzar, I was like a child, and we did the film just like that, without even understanding the kind of comment it was making or anything of that sort. But what stayed with me is the heartbreaking end of the character.

AVC: You’ve mentioned in interviews that you don’t have a process to get into or out of character. You have also played some of the heaviest characters in cinema history. If you don’t have a process, does that mean that it is also easy for you to leave a character behind? Or does it take time?

T: In your question, I am finding my own answer. I don’t know if I don’t have a process. I don’t even know if I have a process. For me, the process is my experience. The experience of playing that character becomes my process, because I don’t think anything else exists except the moments that I’m playing that. I don’t even think it’s possible to live something before you have actually lived it. When you are in front of the camera, you’re in the moment, in the truth of what the character is experiencing. You are experiencing it, and that’s the only thing that will stay. That’s the only thing that matters. So for me, these are experiences. 

I don’t know much about what a process looks like or what it feels like. I don’t know if it is possible, because I don’t think acting is a technical or a mechanical job. There is a technique to a few things. You can have technique when you are doing an action scene or something like that. I don’t think we leave [the character]. There’ll be some kind of carry-forward. For me, it’s the experience: how everything has actually been when I was shooting that, when I was living that, when I was being that. So I would prefer to call it the alchemy that happens inside you after you have done something, after you’ve experienced something, whether it’s in front of the camera, whether it’s you after doing this interview, or after writing something, after watching something. You have changed somewhere, right? That process has changed something in you. That process has either deleted something out of you or added something to you, so you are going to come back a changed person in some way or the other, because you have added one more layer to your mind or your experiential body, like they say.

AVC: You worked with Irrfan Khan a few times, notably in The Namesake and in Maqbool. What is it like to find different shades of a relationship with the same person? 

T: So with different people, it’s different. With Ajay [Devgn, Tabu’s frequent co-star], it’s very different. I’ve done 11, 12 movies with him, but it always feels the same, because our equation is like that. Not a lot of what we do on-screen impacts our relationship, because we’ve known each other [for so long]. With Irrfan, it was very, very, very different. It was, like you said, a very different world in Maqbool, and it was a very different world in The Namesake—physically, geographically, and [with the] the kind of emotional intensity Maqbool had, the kind of darkness. So sometimes you prefer one world to the other. 

But luckily, both Maqbool and The Namesake were equally loved by people. Every day there will be one person who will tag me on Instagram with their Namesake post. [With regard to] immigration and cinema, The Namesake was one of the first few that really made that breakthrough and became a commercial success. Maqbool will always be current. There are some films that never grow old, never become dated. Maqbool and The Namesake will always be like that. 

AVC: You regularly get to explore adaptations of Western literature. In Fitoor, you play Begum Hazrat Jahaan, the equivalent of Miss Havisham; in Maqbool, Nimmi, the Lady Macbeth figure; in Haider, you play Hazala Meer/Gertrude—

T: Sense And Sensibility [the Tabu-starring Tamil film Kandukondain Kandukondain is an adaptation of the Austen novel].

AVC: But you’re channeling it through your own context as an Indian woman, which is intriguing.

T: It’s an honor to begin with. See, in Maqbool and Haider, it’s [director] Vishal [Bharadwaj]’s space. He excels in adapting Shakespeare into the Indian context, into worlds that he knows very well. He knows, if not geographically, then in many other ways—as a filmmaker, as a creative person, as a collaborator, his music, his eye, his vision, and just the way he writes a scene, what he gives to his characters. 

I studied in Hyderabad. People in Mumbai, Delhi, they had Shakespeare in the syllabus. We did not. So for me, it was an unfamiliar territory completely. My grandmother read Shakespeare. He was her favorite author, but my grandmother was a [Montessori-trained] kindergarten teacher for 45 years, and she worked with Britishers in Montessori [schools]. So literature was an everyday thing for her, but I was too young, and Shakespeare was completely unfamiliar to me when Vishal [Bharadwaj] came to me with Maqbool. 

It was a little intimidating in the beginning, to say, “Okay, it’s Shakespeare; I’ve not read it, but let me just read the script.” Vishal had told me the outline, and his adaptations literally take you away from anything that you might have read about Macbeth. For me, the emotional journey of the character, the relationships of the character are what are going to anchor me in the film and my performance, so that for me becomes my path. 

For me, it was extremely interesting and motivating to bring these characters to life, have my own take on it, [put] my own flesh and blood into it—my own emotional resonance, my own journey of my life, how I express myself, and how I live in the world. So it’s been really [a landmark experience] for me to have done so many films based on these iconic books. Life Of Pi, if you read it, it’s impossible to get a sense of the actual essence. When you watch the film, you understand. I know people who have watched Life Of Pi who have been in a daze for weeks, because there’s so many layers in it.

AVC: Your role as Suman Dev in Thakshak is very nuanced. This is a person who wants to believe in beauty and goodness, but she constantly has to confront brutality. It’s not an easily understood film. It’s about the inevitability of fate, and it’s the darkest film you’ve done with Ajay Devgn.

T: It’s actually the darkest film that I’ve done with Ajay. It was, for him also, one of the first films of that genre that he was exploring or experimenting with. After [director Govind Nihalani]’s body of work, you know you can expect darkness and depth, but Govind-ji is also a DP, so he also does not compromise on beauty and aesthetics. It’s very, very rare and a very strange blend that somebody who makes this kind of heavy subject film is also so worried about, “No, the curtain flew at the wrong time.” 

You’ll be doing a scene and suddenly, in the middle of the shot, he’ll say, “Woh lamp udhar kyun rakha hai? Woh lamp ko hatao!” [“Why has that lamp been placed there? Move the lamp!”] And his obsession with having loose hair for me. He’s like “Bal kholiye.” [“Let down your hair.”] In one scene, I just casually tied it in a ponytail, and we took the shots. He was very restless. Finally he came to me and said, “Tu bal khol de.” [“You let down your hair.”] Like a child. “Okay, Govind-ji, toh bal khol diya.” [“Okay, Govind, I’ll let down my hair.”] 

[For] so many of these films, in retrospect, I was so young. Just to absorb the director’s vision, their depth, where they are coming from is a very different world altogether. You’re there, doing this part, being in this film, doing some really heavy scenes, important scenes, good scenes, which have a lot of substance. You’re saying very important things. 

AVC: Your role in Hera Pheri is unusual because your character is projecting power she doesn’t actually have.

T: [Laughs] Yeah.

AVC: She’s tough, but she’s concealing her mother’s illness because she’s afraid of looking weak. But all this takes place in a comedic environment.

T: That’s the writing of the film. That’s [director] Priyadarshan, the touch and go, the not making too much out of tragedy. It came at a time when not a lot of this kind of storytelling, this kind of filmmaking, this kind of approach, was happening. If it was tragic, it was just tragic. If it was comic, it was only comic. So that is unusual, and that is why Hera Pheri is iconic. 

It will always be a very important template, the way actors were performing. It really changed [public perception of] Akshay [Kumar]. The way he performed was very new. Sunil Shetty, me…the characters were looking so real, but they were doing such larger-than-life things. I was in this cotton saree with a bindi, chashma [glasses], short hair, one braid, and I was doing the craziest things. Everybody’s trying to survive. Everybody’s trying to con the other. It was a crazy ride. That’s why people still look at it and laugh.

AVC: It began a trend of comedies where the poor are concocting intricate schemes just to get by.

T: [Laughs] Yes!

AVC: A film like Fukrey owes everything to Hera Pheri. [Tabu claps] It’s a different generation of people creating excessive plans to pay off a debt or buy food.

T: And it’s nice to tell it in an entertaining way. You say something important, but you say it in an entertaining way. 

AVC: You’ve mentioned that Angoor is one of your favorite films. Directed by Gulzar, it’s another Hindi Shakespearean adaptation—

T: In which I have not acted! 

AVC: Which role would you want? Would you want the double role to be female?

T: Of coooooourse! [Laughs] It would be amazing. Angoor is one of my favorites. Angoor, Chupke Chupke, the original Golmaal.

AVC: If you could choose, who would you have direct you in Angoor?

T: Gulzar saab, just the way it was made.

AVC: Who was it in your family who was obsessed with Utpal Dutt, the legendary Bengali actor?

T: My grandmother. He was her favorite. She used to always say, “Bete, Utpal Dutt joh actor hai…” [“Daughter, the actor that Utpal Dutt is…”] We were so young; we didn’t know what she was seeing in him. She always spoke about a performance of his, where he wins the jackpot. He’s so happy he just puts the briefcase next to his chest, has a heart attack, and dies. [This is the 1976 science-fiction film Kitne Paas Kitne Door.] 

When you grow up and are part of cinema, when you become an actor, then you understand. You know what these people have done. They have laid the foundation for cinema, for actors of future generations. Because ’70s cinema was still evolving, from the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s. I don’t know if the change is completely done now, but the actors and material at that time did not have so many references. They were all doing original work, and that’s why the performances of these actors will always be historic.

AVC: You’re a great admirer of Waheeda Rehman. Is there a performance of hers you especially love?

T: Waheeda-ji was ethereal in Guide. I don’t think I was even born when it came out. When you watch it as a grownup, when you keep watching it, when you revisit it, you see that it speaks about so many things. As part of the audience, we each take something that resonates with us, something we did not know existed. It speaks about the man/woman dynamic, most importantly, and is set in this backdrop of dance: a woman walking out on her husband, empowered because she wants to live a life. 

It just blows your mind to see what they have done in those movies, like Jaagte Raho. You see children in the film, you see poverty in the film, you see the big-city syndrome. You see corruption in the film, you see a husband and wife in a failed marriage dynamic. It’s really so much happening in one night. In one night! 

AVC: And now we come to Dune: Prophecy. During the scene in which Sister Francesca learns of Sister Kasha’s death, you respond only with your eyes. Your expression is sorrowful but also alarmed, considering the power balance, the politics of the situation. Was it a conscious choice on your part to limit the action to your eyes?

T: I don’t know! [Laughs] Oh god! When the camera is in your face, and you’re in that moment, you don’t know which part of your face is doing what. Maybe it comes in my eyes effectively, or it shows up in my eyes without effort. But also, the eyes are the most important feature of anybody’s face, especially an actor’s [and] especially when you’re in a close-up.

AVC: Watching you act alongside Mark Strong and Emily Watson is like watching Om Puri work with Helen Mirren. With Strong, your task was to reflect a complex history. Francesca and Javicco were once lovers; they share a son. Did you discuss this dynamic with Strong before filming?

T: I guess both Mark and I have lived a life. We have had enough experiences in our life to embody it. When we come together, it’s these two things colliding with each other and creating this whole ball of energy, if you can call it that. Or it’s just [that we are] in tune with each other, and [that’s when] you can see that these people have had a history.

Either [actors] match each other or they are mismatched. Luckily, Mark and I have matched each other so well. I can’t put a finger on what it is. It’s not something that you can do. It’s not a doing; it’s just a being. I was me, he was him, and when we came together, a story was told without saying anything. And there is nothing I can say, or anybody can say, that can literally analyze it or articulate it or encapsulate it in words.

AVC: What did you learn from Emily Watson?

T: Emily is the most calm and understated as far as her process or anything is concerned. She’s the one of the most real people I have worked with. When she had time off, she took me to this beautiful, quaint railway station, which she wanted me to see. We went for dinner, Mark, me, Jodhi [May] and Emily. After dinner, we were walking back to the hotel. She said, “Tabu, I want you to see this railway station. Come on.” And it was, you know, thoda underground jaa ke [you had to go a bit underground], and it was like this magical railway station, which had one station master, an old man, sitting there. 

It felt like like something out of a story book. I was like, “Oh, my god, is this real?” And she said, “Isn’t it lovely?” I said, “It’s beautiful. Thank you for showing me this. Thank you for this experience.” It will always stay with me that she wanted me to have this experience, to see this place. But she’s just lovely. She’s so soft, but she’s so sincere with her work. So collaborative. “Let’s do this.” “Okay, if I hold your hand like this; let’s hold hands.” “What if I come from here? What if I come from there?” 

Just to work with somebody with that much experience, that kind of journey… you feel there is so much that you can talk about and exchange—and, most importantly, [you can] be real people. We can talk about our work, our industry, that scene. But you can still talk about other things unrelated to cinema and that is the most enriching part of working with people. And this is especially what I am taking back [with me from Dune]: my dinners and my conversations with Mark, Emily and Jodhi, and the times we spent together. I will just remember it for the rest of my life. I’m so glad I made this small little gang of people. And Josh [Heuston, who plays Franscesca and Javicco’s son Constantine], my boy, the most gorgeous, the most loving, lovable son. I love him.

AVC: Beta ho to aisa. [If you have a son, let him be like this.]

T: Beta ho to aisa, and I really wish Josh so much success in his life. I want him to have the world.