‘There’s a sea of chess players’

Kalki Koechlin may have established herself as an actress of merit, but as a ‘small pawn in a sea of other chess players’, she says making a mark in the industry is quite difficult. 

“Pressure to do good work is always there. The pressure of being one small pawn in such a vast sea of other chess players. You’ve got to try and make your bit count, it’s always hard,” Kalki said. 

Though she has consistently gained praise for her work in films like Margarita, With a Straw, Waiting and the recent Gully Boy, the actress says finding a well-written role is always a challenge. 

“It’s one of my constant complaints. To find interesting characters that have layers to them is difficult. They are few and far in between. It’s an amazing feeling for an actor when you do get such roles.” She will next be seen in Amazon Prime Video’s latest India original Made in Heaven, created by filmmakers Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti.  The web series has been directed by Zoya, Nitya Mehra, Alankrita Shrivastava and Prashant Nair. 

Kalki says it is a tough job for the writers to come up with a good script as it involves following multiple narratives with equal focus, especially when it is a web series.  “It’s not just one narrative. You have to follow all the characters. Especially in commercial cinema, we have a tendency to have the ‘hero-heroine’ in focus. But within a more extended storyline like in this show, you get to see all the characters,” she says. — PTI