Lillete Dubey didn’t want to be new Aruna Irani after Zubeidaa: ‘I love her but…’

Lillete Dubey is one of the finest actors in India. The 68-year-old actor says she loves to jump from films to shows to theatre to short films. From playing Rose in Zubeidaa, Jazz in Kal Ho Naa Ho to a cane-chewing village woman in her next, Lillete has done all an actor can and more. She now plays a maternity coach faking pregnancy in her recently released short film, Birth. In an interview with Hindustan Times, the actor talks about the characters that interest her and why she never wanted to be another Aruna Irani. Also read: Lillete Dubey reveals the reality check her mom-in-law gave her when she was 24

Lillete found her character in Birth a different one and said that wasn’t an opportunity that comes to her so often. “What does an actor do? They try to understand humanity by getting under the skin of very different people and try to see the world from that point of view. Every time the character is very different, it interests me. I want to understand what is her attitude, what is she thinking. The regular ones are very easy to play,” she says.

Lillete continues to get interesting work and has couple of projects in pipeline, including a comedy. In an upcoming film with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, she will be seen as an old woman in a small village of Uttar Pradesh. Sharing the outlook of her character, the actor said, “This dadi just sits on a khaat, smokes hookah, cracks the cane, is the boss of the family and speaks in absolutely UP dialect. I am so happy that the director thought of me. I said, ‘bless you’ because people get so stuck in what I look like. We are so spoilt in the theatre, we can play anything.”

The actor played Rose in Karisma Kapoor-starrer Zubeidaa in 2001 and has never chosen a role that would typecast her. “After Zubeida, I was put in this dockyard that I will be the new Aruna Irani. I said I love Aruna Irani but I don’t want to be Aruna Irani. I want to feel free to do anything I want to do,” she adds.

Just last year, Lillete played herself in a web show, Call My Agent, and left her fans asking for more. On being told she deserves a whole web series for that one character, she says, “The best compliment is people keep telling me why don’t you do that part in a bigger role.”

Lillete is aware about the variety in her work and the characters she has played on screen or on stage. Ask her about what actually she looks for in a work offer and she replies, “In theatre, I choose the material, I interpret it and sometimes direct it as well. In films and shows, I have to resonate with the character or subject in one way. I wanted to be part of My Brother Nikhil because for the first time, it talked about a gay man who had HIV. It’s very seductive, you know it’s not true and the director is just saying it to get you do the part, that, ‘I only want you, I have written this part only for you.’ I believed in the film, there was not so much about my role.”

She further adds, “Sometimes its just working with great actors. In Baghban, it was just to work with Amitabh Bachchan and Paresh Rawal. Sometimes it’s to work with a great team, like it was the team in Kal Ho Naa Ho including Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar. Sometimes it’s just a very different role, a chance I may not get again.”

Lillete promises her next two upcoming projects would be totally different as well. “One is a Kashmiri character and the other is a very fun character. I consider myself very lucky that at this ripe old age, some interesting work keeps coming on its own and I manage to get some variety at least,” she says.

The actor will now be seen as Sonam Kapoor’s mother in the film Blind. The shooting of the film was completed more than a year ago.