After the grand success of Broken But Beautiful first season featuring Vikrant Massey and Harleen Sethi, the makers of the show are back with another season. The show has premiered and early reviews have been flying in. Fans are even more excited about the way the season has turned out to be.
In an exclusive interview with The Statesman, Harleen, who plays the character of Sameera in the web show thinks that the second season is more attached to her personal life than a fictional tale, shares her experience and the changes that audiences will see in the second season.
Excerpts
What will be the biggest change that people will see in ‘Broken But Beautiful’?
In season 1, Sameera was very broken but in Season 2, she is extremely beautiful (giggles).
Jokes apart, in Season 1, she was genuinely broken. She did not realize her self-worth, what she actually deserves. She had put her core in somebody else’s and completely forgotten about herself. In Season 2, people will see her new avatar. Now Sameera is kind of healed. She is back with a new attitude and has become more confident. She has now started to understand what self-love is. She has started enjoying her work, going out with friends, shopping and many more.
But when that one element from the past comes back in front of your life, you actually realise whether you’ve really healed or not. So, that is the catch in this season where we see that she has moved on but did she really heal because when she spots Veer again and when Veer comes back into her life, she is shaken. At that time, she again becomes conflicted, complex and is extremely layered because most of the times, whatever she is feeling she is not saying it. This is what makes this season, an interesting one.
What according to you self-love is?
Self-love is listening to your gut because most times your gut always tells you what is right and what is wrong. Considering Sameera, she would rather protect herself and not invest as much as she did in her previous relationship. So, all of that investment is now for herself. She has become a kind of noncommittal and the time that she had invested in a boy, now she wants to invest in herself. She is taking her career forward, getting a makeover and doing so much.
How satisfied are you with your career so far?
By God’s grace, it’s been going really good. When you get this kind of love, especially that personal kind of love that Sameera gets, it’s very overwhelming because Sameera has become a very personal character for everyone who watches the show. People can relate it to their personal life. The way they write their love stories and say that they’ve healed watching me is beyond everything. So, when you get this kind of love, I just feel very grateful more than anything else and am extremely happy with the way everything has been going. I never planned to even come in front of camera but now that it is happening and people are accepting me with so much love, it feels great.
You’ve started your career at a very early age; describe your journey since then.
My journey has been like that of a river. I have always flown just the way a river flows there hasn’t been much thought in it. Wherever, I get an opportunity, without much ado, I grab it. I know my source and my destination but I don’t know how I am going to flow like a river.
You have done documentaries, short films and web space, how different has the experience been, which is your favourite?
I don’t think that the platform really matters because you do everything with the same conviction. You try to imitate every character with the same truthfulness and so, in terms of performance it’s been the same but in terms of format, the graph that you plan for yourself as an actor differs. If a web show has 10 episodes, it will have a long graph as compared to a short film which is of couples of minutes and so the preparation differs.
Romance and drama are my favourite genre.
If it wasn’t for acting, what or where do you think your life would have been?
I have grown in the creative field ever since I stepped into the industry. So, If not acting, I would have been doing something creative such as performing arts or something similar like singing, dancing, marketing, and advertising.
What are your upcoming projects?
There is something coming up next month. Most probably in the first or second week of December, people will hear a big announcement.
What is that one thing that you want to tell to the aspiring actors?
For the aspiring actors, I just want to tell them that your consistency and discipline are going to take you far in whatever field you want to work to. These two things only define success and you have to take it one day at a time.