Huma Qureshi says she wants to play unconventional, morally ambiguous characters rather than women who remain passive on screen. “I want to play Kabir Singh, I don't want to play Preeti,” the actress said in conversation with writer Mohar Basu at IFP Season 16.
Qureshi, who is currently shooting for Maharani Season 5 in Bhopal, said, “I feel you have to give yourself the liberty to play outrageous characters, to play morally ambiguous characters, to play characters that don’t follow the norm”.
Explaining why she would be ill-suited to playing a woman who simply watches a hero being attacked, Qureshi said, “If somebody offers me a role in which villain hero ko maar raha hai aur main wahan pe khade hoke ro rahi hoon aur bol rahi hoon, ‘Please isey mat maaro’. Am I not the wrong cast for it? Yes, 100 per cent wrong cast. Ek lappad to main bhi marungi.”
Qureshi also recalled her early days in the industry and her first interaction with filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who offered her a role in Gangs of Wasseypur. “I was very naive,” she said, recalling her response to Kashyap: “Sir abhi to main aayi hoon, abhi to bahut struggle karna hai mujhe.”
Qureshi credited filmmakers such as Kashyap, Abhishek Chaubey, Sriram Raghavan and Vasan Bala with giving her the space to explore complex characters.
She also spoke about the importance of understanding a character’s inner life, recalling how Raghavan’s handwritten notes on her Badlapur script included the question, “What is she thinking right now?”
Her experience working on Leila, the Netflix series directed by Deepa Mehta, was another turning point. Qureshi said Mehta used physical restrictions to reflect her character’s sense of entrapment, while a handheld camera and a 25mm lens remained close to her face.
“I think this show really changed me as a performer,” she said. “I was literally bare in this show… I think people see the tip of the iceberg, but this definitely is the foundation stone.”
Qureshi also discussed the challenge of portraying characters whose actions conflict with her personal beliefs, citing her role as a human trafficker in Delhi Crime. “You don't justify. You just live,” she said. “As an actor, it is not your job to justify, to think for them, to apply your own moral compass to them”.
Qureshi said her recent move into production with Baby Do Die Do, alongside her brother Saqib Saleem, has given her a different perspective on the film industry.
“Being an actor is club class,” she said, describing a producer's role as that of “a service provider”. “That whole journey has changed me,” she said, adding that producing was “quite addictive”.
“I realise how hard it is in today’s day and age to actually sell tickets to people when they go watch a film. And it’s not the same as easy viewing at home,” she said.
Arguing for a more diverse theatrical ecosystem, she said, “The business is not sustained by that one big film in a year. It will be sustained by multiple and different kinds of films.”