Actress Meera Chopra opened up about not just her latest web series ‘The Tattoo Murders’, in which she shares the screen space with Tarun Virwani but also about her experience of essaying a cop on-screen and her journey in Bollywood and Tollywood.
Talking about ‘The Tattoo Murders’ streaming on Disney + Hotstar, Meera said, “‘The Tattoo Murders’ was previously called Kamathipura. As the name suggests, it’s about prostitution, drugs, mafia, and police. How they work hand in glove with the whole system. We have heard about prostitution in India but have not seen much stuff in films or TV around it. It’s strange as it’s illegal but still it happens in such a legal way in our country. The script was different, raw and I was being offered a role which I had not attempted before. I had never even imagined myself in the role of a cop, I have a bucket list of roles I want to play but cop was never on that list. Everything about it was exciting and that made me sign this show.”
When asked about her experience of playing a cop on-screen and if she did any special prep for the role, she responded, “I couldn’t do any physical prep for it but I did see a lot of movies, especially Bollywood movies where the protagonist is a female cop like ‘Jai Gangajal’, both parts of ‘Mardani’. In ‘Jai Gangajal’, Priyanka played a cop and then I saw ‘Drishyam’ so my reference point was Tabu. The way she was walking, her body language and everything was on point, I did not try copying that but it was a very strong referral point.”
On sharing screen space with Tanuj, Meera expressed, “Tanuj is younger than me. He is like a kid so I treated him like that. He was fun to work with. Even Tanuj was playing the role of a crazy villian for the first time. We shot 80% of the show in Kamathipura and it’s very difficult to get permission to shoot there. 90% of the show is Gorilla shoot wherein we go with spy cameras without any unit. We didn’t have our staff with us. There were only four to five members with us while we were shooting. At times, it can be scary as Kamathipura is not an easy place to shoot. But, the energy levels of both of us was so high that every time the director asked us that ‘Would you shoot without any permission?’ and our response was, ‘yeah, let’s do it.’ There was no attitude problem, both of us were on the same page. We were equally excited about the show.”
Encapsulating her journey so far in Bollywood and Tollywood, she said, “Both the journeys have been different. The working styles are similar in both the industries. But, in South, things were easy for me. My first film became an instant hit and whatever projects I did after that were served to me on platter. When it came to Bollywood, it was opposite. The struggle was crazy difficult. It’s not easy to get what you want here. The competition is humongous. I am still struggling to get what I want in Bollywood. Things became easier after ‘Section 375’. But, before that, at times, it was depressing. You would start questioning yourself. Do you want to continue or give up. Bollywood journey was an emotional battle but now things are becoming easier. You need to be strong and have crazy passion to be in this industry. Otherwise, it is easy to breakdown.”