EXCLUSIVE | Ira Dubey: 'My own mother is a working mother and a successful one, so you can work & have a family too'

For Ira Dubey, it’s actually homecoming with Potluck season 2 since she reunites with Rajshree Ojha and Cyrus Sahukar after Aisha that came out in 2010. This is also her second season just like everyone else from the cast so she gets to reprise what she has done before. In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, she chats about all of this.

On what drew her to the script and her character Aakansha

There were a couple of things that attracted me to the show. It’s well conceived, slice of life, it has a certain freshness to it in terms of its writing, cast. The audiences and we as creators, we all need this, especially after Covid-19. Everyone was tired of the dark, the heavy, the violent and Potluck seemed like the right kind of a thing to jump into. As far as Aakansha goes, there were multiple attractions. I’m opposite Cyrus Sahukar with whom I’ve been in a very famous and popular film called Aisha. It was very exciting for me to reconnect with him. The director of show also happens to be someone we both have worked with. The first day of the shoot when I connected with the entire cast, it was a very memorable day. You come to know the ingredients of everything are right. This could happen at any time, your friendship, your work place, you feel it’s just right. We have had many potlucks off camera as well, between season one and season two, and we have become like family in many ways. We are happy that it translated and people felt that as well. I’m a mother of three on the show, a working woman, and today, gender roles have changed, expectations from women are changing, they have become very independent and ambitious. My own mother has been a working mother and a very successful one. I’ve been raised with the idea that you can work and also raise a family.

On working with Rajshree and Cyrus again after Aisha

Nothing has changed. Cyrus is a married man now, Rajshree is still the same but has mellowed a little bit; all of us have. We all have gone in our careers and taken varying directions, but when we come together, you feel nothing has changed. The only thing I feel a pet-peeve about is because we had a comfort level with Rajshree, Cyrus and I were thrown into the deep end first. But it was fun to deal with that.

On the similarities between Aakansha and Ira

You have to find those similarities, you have to find that the character is somewhere within you. It’s not necessarily in your personal life but also in your imagination. Even though I’ve never been a mother or ever been married, I had to get into the skin of these. You have to build and draw those things. The real challenge was to play a woman that had to balance all those things, to essay the spirit of a woman that had to manage her family and career. I hope I’ve been able to infuse some truth into it. She’s quirky, she’s ambitious, she’s full of love, she puts her family first, these are the things I identified with completely.

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