Nargis Fakhri: I would never be naked for a project

Nargis Fakhri is all set to make her OTT debut and what excites her the most about this movement towards web space is how it allows artistes to push their boundaries. “Knowing that the OTT space has exploded with so much content, I was always very much curious about being a part of it. OTT content pushes boundaries and allows actors to explore their limits. Any actor including me would want to do that. Also there are so many different kinds of characters out there which is exciting. So you have more variety and I believe that’s the spice of acting,” says Fakhri, who will be seen along side Dheeraj Dhoopar and Divya Agarwal in the project titled Tatlubaaz.

Ask her if this excitement is the result of cinema holding her back for years from showing her true potential and the actor says she does not think “cinema held me back”. “I just think that I fit certain characters better. So I got cast for those characters. They call it pigeonholing sometimes. When you see a character the actor has played, and it fits them well, they keep getting those same roles over and over. But I don’t think it’s on purpose. It’s natural that humans enjoy seeing an actor play a certain role and so they keep getting those roles,” Fakhri shares.

Though she asserts that repetitive roles did not annoy her because she “enjoyed” every film that she worked on, the Madras cafe actor is happy that with the OTT platform, there’s more content and a variety of characters to play. “So now we have more opportunities to explore.”

While OTT platforms have never shied away from going out of the way and experimenting with different ideas, it is not uncommon for some of these experiments to backfire and make the audience uncomfortable. Ask if she has drawn lines for herself in terms of the extent to which she would go in experimenting, and she says, “I would never be naked for a project. I have a problem with nudity.” But apart from that, Fakhri says, she is open to take on challenging roles that may involve portraying characters with diverse sexual orientations or unconventional storylines including homosexuality, which has been a point of debate lately.

“I wouldn’t mind that because playing a homosexual or being shown as a woman married to another woman doesn’t bother me. Playing any character for me is part of my job. You’re acting and I think that’s totally fine,” she says and goes on to address the concerns being raised by several people about how it’s uncomfortable to watch OTT content with families. “The audience has a choice to watch it or not. They can choose to switch it off or watch something else. That’s the beauty of OTT platform. There are so many options out there,” she ends.