A week into the release of Mandala Murders, Shriya Pilgaonkar has already got her favourite compliment. “Someone said to me, ‘We didn’t think you could scare us.’ I love that. I think people felt that way because I have usually played morally righteous parts,” smiles the actor, pleased that a cameo in the Netflix series has made a strong impact.
In Mandala Murders, led by Vaani Kapoor, Pilgaonkar plays Rukmini, a woman leading a cult in the fictional town of Charandaspur of 1950s Uttar Pradesh. She may have barely five scenes in the eight-part series, but it has reminded the actor that the length of a role doesn’t determine its impact. “I have headlined OTT projects. So, when you think about perception, it’s a gamble to play a role with relatively less screen time. But something about Rukmini was magnetic. Also, less screen time doesn’t make me insecure as an actor. It becomes your responsibility to add weight to the part,” says the actor.
A still from ‘Mandala Murders’
Interestingly, Pilgaonkar’s role was written well after the filming of the series, created by Gopi Puthran, was wrapped up. The actor reveals, “They had finished filming the show two years before. My entire segment was an afterthought. It was not supposed to be part of the season [initially]. It was conceptualised and written much later.” She adds that she took a screen test to land the role. “Gopi sir and I tried exploring Rukmini because the scenes were being developed at that point. He lit the scene beautifully. Even though I knew they wanted me for the part, I wanted to audition so that everyone could rest assured that I was capable of pulling it off.”
In awe of Puthran’s larger-than-life treatment and positioning of her character in the series, Pilgaonkar hopes to achieve this kind of projection in her future offerings. She reasons, “No matter how good one may be at their craft, it is an industry of perception, and positioning plays a huge role in your trajectory. I am focusing more on films now because it’s easy for people to bracket us as OTT actors. I want to focus on work that will [project] me in an exciting way. You need strong positioning and mounting.”