EXCLUSIVE! Rani Mukerji: ‘The success of Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway is because of the audience’

In an EXCLUSIVE interview with Firstpost, actor Rani Mukerji mentions that the success of the film is because of the audience accepting it. She says that it was a huge responsibility to play the role of Sagarika Chakraborty, the real mother who fought like a tigress to get her children back.

The film is directed by Ashima Chibber and written by Rahul Handa, Sameer Satija and Chibber, is based on the true story of an Indian couple whose children were taken away from them by Norwegian Welfare Services in 2011. Rani Mukerjiis truly the ultimate queen of content. With the success of Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway, Rani has dented the narrative that content films are only for OTT releases. She  plays the titular Mrs. Chatterjee who battles with the Norwegian government to reunite with her children. She believes that a good film will always find it’s audience.

Edited excerpts from the interview:

How do you feel on denting the narrative that content films are only for OTT with Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway? What do you think touched the audience?

I think the success of the film is because of the audience, you know, if the audience hadn’t given the film a chance then you and I wouldn’t have been doing this interview. I believe that good cinema will find its audience. And this is what happened with this film, and I’m really grateful to the audience for having given the film a chance on the big screen. Because the most fashionable word today among cinema lovers is ‘OTT content. This really bothers me because I am a cinema child and I have grown on a diet of big screen cinema. And for me, I believe in the ‘magic of cinema’. I believe that a cinema has to be so personal that when you go into that movie theater, where it is all dark and it is your connection with that character of the film and you can completely immerse yourself in the experience of the movie. I am happy that the audience gave this film a chance and they made an effort to go to the cinema halls to watch Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway.

What were the responsibilities of playing the real mother, Sagarika Chakraborty in Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway?

The role of bringing Sagarika’s emotions, her trauma and a story of a mother was a huge responsibility for me and I tried to portray the shock and ordeal of a mother being separated from her children and to the anger and frustration of not understanding the law and order of another country and not understanding as to why would something like this happen to her.  Sagarika made a decision that she will continue this fight and not give up. There was a varied range of emotions that I had to portray through this film and through Sagarika’s journey.

I believed that it was my duty to portray her emotions to the best of my ability because to make an audience as to what a mother has been through because it was a range of different emotions that happened at different points of time and her determination and belief that she is going to win her children back.

Your diction and accent even when you are speaking in Hindi and English in Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway is perfect, a typical way a small town Bong would speak. Did you go through some coaching for that?

When I did the role of Debika Chatterjee, I just had to think of my mother because her diction even today, after being in Maharashtra, for 50 years remains the same. I would put it this way that even when she speaks in Hindi, she does it like a Bengali because she was raised in West Bengal. She got married at 22 and moved to Mumbai, but she still is so connected to her roots that she has not given up on her accent. I have noticed that people of Kolkata still have a very strong Bengali accent even if they are speaking in Hindi or English. I tried real hard to portray that because I wanted it to sound authentic. I didn’t want people to relate this character of Debika to Rani Mukerji, the actor, but I wanted them to relate to Sagarika, the real mother. To make this character look real, I became very different from who I am as a person.

I don’t think you need to be a mother to understand the emotions. I related to this character on a very human level. Firstly, as an Indian citizen I was basically angered with the thought that an Indian citizen has gone through this ordeal in another country. So there were a lot of things that I kind of related with Sagarika and then she being a Bengali and a mother.

On women’s roles changing and content becoming queen and not king…

 It is amazing the way you have put it ‘content is queen and not king’. Let’s make this statement of yours popular. I feel so happy to hear this coming from a fellow colleague of mine, which is ‘you’. It sounds great. But I have always believed that content is what drives all of us and it is content that drives a film to become successful. And in this case, the success of Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway, has given us so much validation. People were quite cynical and not believing in the film. It was the audience who showed us the path. I really hope and pray that more content films work in the future and I am able to make the audience happy with more interesting stories.

What is your daughter’s reaction to Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway?

Adira is just seven and she knows that my film is released because I had a screening for all her teachers in school. She knows me very closely because she was with me in Estonia during the filming of Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway. And she was doing her homeschooling at that point. And the time we spent together there, I am sure she is going to remember it very fondly.

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