Kubbra Sait has spent more than a decade in the Hindi film industry, but her journey as an actress has just begun. Making her debut with a small role in Ready (2011), she hosted many TV shows in the subsequent years. She then made a major splash in the Netflix series Sacred Games, playing the role of a transgender character, receiving wide critical acclaim.

Sait has continued to appear in films and web shows, but her biggest role is also her latest, in an American sci-fi series, Foundation, where she collaborated with renowned actors, screenwriters and technicians around the world. The Wire spoke to her about her transformations, spanning different oeuvre, formats and countries.  

Edited excerpts from the chat:

You’ve had an atypical trajectory for an Indian actress. You were born in Bangalore, moved to Dubai, and worked there at Microsoft. How did it all start?

I was born and raised in a protective family. My mum was the custodian of the way we represented ourselves, not just as individuals but as a family. She was always concerned about our actions reflecting her upbringing. So, I wasn’t allowed to make too many mistakes.

I was also hosting a lot of events in Bangalore. And then, in 2005, I moved cities. It was my first flight ever. It was my first foreign country ever. My first job was working at a cookie shop, then somewhere else, then somewhere else, and I finally ended up at Microsoft. Which really meant, “Wow, meri beti ab itna accha kar rahi hai. Ab toh accha ladka mil jayega. [My daughter is doing so well. Now she’ll find a suitable boy.]”

But then somewhere around 2008, it began bugging me — like a thorn in my shoe. I began thinking, “What am I doing with my life? I don’t think I’m contributing anything new. I don’t think I’m evolving.” So, I thought let’s take a leap of faith and see what happens.

Can you talk about your early days in the industry? How difficult was it to make contacts, get noticed, land roles?

I knew nobody. I knew Haji Ali [Juice Centre] though, and that it served very good pomegranate juice and seetaphal cream. I’d meet people through Facebook and ask the numbers of casting directors. It wasn’t as formal as it is today. Casting directors were still the unicorn, the myth. It was like, “Tum kaun se producer ko jaante ho? Tum kaun se actor ke associate ko jaante ho? [Which producer do you know? Which actor’s associate do you know?]”

And God knows, when you’re in a corporate job, you know how to write good emails. So, I wrote bloody good introduction emails, and that’s how I got to know people. And then one thing led to the other. I started to host a lot of events in the city, and because I had lived a life where entertainment wasn’t my only passion, I was able to break through and bring in a sense of realism into even hosting events.

Your rise as an actress coincides with the rise of OTT platforms in India. How do you reflect on those parallel transformations: the rise of a performer and the rise of a technological phenomenon? 

I think it made people scratch their heads and wonder, “What? She’s an actor?” Because even I didn’t know I was an actor. Ten years ago, this city and the film business were all about the ‘good guy-bad guy’, damsel in distress, or vamp — that’s it, there was no backstory. Also, they were two-and-a-half or three hours long, you couldn’t go deep. But since then, for me, the people in the writing room, the creative minds, have been the real heroes. Because they get to dish out the soul of every character. Everything had more depth.

Also read: Performances Save 'House of Gucci', a Film Whose Executions and Ambitions Are Not in Sync

That was something that worked in my favour and that I got on a pedestal with geniuses — like Nawazuddin Siddiqui or Anurag Kashyap — who have been masters of independent storytelling, who have created opportunities for others. Then there are shows — whether Four More Shots or The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — where you see women in such prominent roles. Or Taapsee [Pannu] for that matter, who has taken on the mantle to tell such stories. They have always had a place; we just didn’t explore them, because we thought, “Kaun dekhega [who will watch]?” That for me became a great time to be in the city, a great time to be in this profession, because I was given different roles. But more than that, I’ve learnt a lot, I’ve grown as a person. Earlier, I used to be very angsty. Now I’ve become a lot more accepting of myself, of accepting the greys in myself.

How did you get the role of Phara in Foundation? Can you talk about the process, from getting the audition to landing the part?

It started in September 2019. I still remember the date, the 24th of September. It was a call from [casting director] Tess Joseph, who said there’s this part we want you to take an audition for. She calls me Cat; she’s my mentor. She’s the kind of person who will never give me bullshit. She won’t say, “You’re so sweet, well done.” Instead, she’ll tell me, “Sorry, Cat, it didn’t work. Work on it better and come back tomorrow.”

So, I go, I take, I come back, and ten days later, there’s a new scene, and… I can’t understand it at all. The English is so text heavy. I am like, “How do I memorise this? There’s a scene in episode five, where Phara talks about how Hari Seldon and his followers are responsible for what happened to the Anacreons — that whole scene was my audition. And I couldn’t understand how the hell I was doing it. I thought, “Congratulations, Kubbra, you’ve botched this up really well.”

But three days later, I get an email from Cameron Welsh, the executive producer, and it said, “We saw something in the first tape, but it was missing in the second. I think you were in too deep with the lines, your head was playing tricks, and your lines were not being delivered. So, can you just take it easy on the lines and give us a good take?” And I am like, “Wow, I have a second chance?” That is when I call Ali [Fazal] and asked him how to do the lines. He told me you’ve to write them over and over again till you memorise them, and that was literally my process through the entire season. Then I was called to Ireland for a screen test. I finally heard an affirmative yes on the 11th of July 2020. So, all these months, I kept saying no to work in India, because I thought, “I really want this, and I think I’ve done well, and until I don’t hear a no, it’s still a yes.”

How did you prepare for the part?

There were so many mediums of assistance right from the audition stage. Cameron Welsh connected me to William Conacher, who had trained actors on their accents and dictions in The Crown. And the beauty is that he didn’t change my accent — just made sure my enunciation was correct. Like, as kids, we never learnt to say “akay-demic”, I used to say “ac-add-emic”. Or “main-tenance”; it’s “main-tay-nance”. Or “repur-cussions”; it’s “ree-per-cussions”. So, I’d do classes with William. Barbara Houseman was my acting coach, with whom I’d do Zoom calls and run through my lines. I spent a lot of time with the script. For the whole year, I did only one job, which is not a luxury you got when you’re working in India. Because here, there’s some ad being shot, some Instagram thing is happening, some meeting is happening, you’ve gone out for dinner — and life is moving on. But over there, this was literally what I had to do.

You speak both English and Anacreon in the series. Your accent, as you said, is quite unaffected throughout — it hasn’t been ‘tailored’ for the Western audience. And Anacreon, a fictitious language, is obviously something none of us have heard before. How did you tackle these facets of your role? Did you want your English and Anacreon to be phonetically different?

Learning Anacreon was an incredible challenge. When I couldn’t understand, I’d memorise it. But the language was beautifully spaced out. It had grammar; it had logic. Every word had a meaning. When I spoke those lines, and I didn’t hear criticism about the way I speak, it became something I wore with a lot of pride. Because I didn’t sound like anyone else. In fact, Daniel [MacPherson], an Australian, doesn’t sound like anyone else, either. So, I thought if Dan can sound like himself, so can Kubbra.    

Also read: It’s Been 30 Years Since Freddie Mercury Died. His Music Is Still the Soundtrack of Our Lives

At the end of the fourth episode, Phara expresses what I’d call an anti-colonial sentiment — “we have no technology. Our people were destroyed despite being innocent. We want to build a new world” — and what makes it even more striking is that it comes from you, a brown actress, adding a completely new layer to the character and the series. How do you reflect on the series in context of such powerful political statements?

I don’t think I was out there to make any statements. Her lines were so watertight, so good, that you couldn’t argue with them. But today when the show is out, you realise that it’s not just Phara who is trying to make these bold statements on how dystopian the situation, fictionally, is. You just walk out of your television screen, look out of your balcony, and you can see the dystopian world you’re living in right now. The other line which blew my mind was the one where Brother Dave tells Brother Dawn, “Art is the sweeter tongue of politics.” And that is what we’ve been trying to say — which is essentially, stop this censorship, stop this, you know, obsessive parental behaviour to what’s created. Because if something is wrong, it needs to be depicted through our cinema, because we are living these stories, and your beliefs cannot be this fragile that you can’t take a fictional story. We need to open our hearts and minds to what’s happening today.

The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.