The year 2014 has been a good one for Nimrat Kaur. After making noise with her acclaimed performance in The Lunchbox on the international film circuit, she made her debut on American television with the popular TV series Homeland. Her character, Tasneem Qureshi, a hard-hitting ISI agent, was introduced as a counterpoint to the lead character, Claire Dane’s obsessed CIA agent. She plays a double-dealing devious character, who’s willing to do anything to see that things turn her way and she enjoyed being the evil incarnate. “She’s someone who knows how to get her job done, she will not stop till she gets what she wants,” Nimrat says about her character. It was a different experience working in Homeland though. “Firstly, I didn’t have a script. I got it just one week before the shooting. I didn’t know the whole graph of my character. We shot from episode to episode. The writers too changed frequently, as did the directors. It was chaotic.”
It didn’t help that Nimrat hadn’t watched the series. “I don’t watch too much TV. I started watching the past seasons while we were shooting in Capetown. I slowly got hooked to it. Now I’m a convert fan,” she smiles. She got the role thanks to her trip to Europe. She was attending a film festival in Slovenia and her agents fixed an audition for the series in London. It was her first ever visit to the city and proved lucky for her.
Nimrat is yet not ready to work for Indian television. “I don’t want to be part of something, which is a copy of something. I don’t think TV is happening in India soon for me.” She insists American TV is different from Indian TV. “There it’s on subscribe network. Also, the shows there are far superior to many movies there. Homeland is respected for its writing and performances across the world.”
It’s been more than a year since the release of The Lunchbox and Nimrat has signed only one film so far back home - T-series’ Airlift (to be directed by Raja Krishna Menon), where she will be paired opposite Akshay Kumar. “(Laughs) Sorry for the disappointment. It’s just taking time. My life has been like that. This is a pattern even I don’t understand. There are things, which I may have wanted at some point in life but they have not come to me then. I have realised that when something doesn’t happen there’s a bigger reason for that. I’m a firm believer in that.”
Nimrat has decided that she won’t do anything like Lunchbox again. “I don’t want to repeat myself. I believe when you are seen in a certain way then people are afraid to take chances. Like throughout my advertising career, I was told that ‘Oh you are so urban, so Western, you have such a long nose, you have a long face, you don’t look desi’.”
She’s been called a late bloomer but Nimrat doesn’t have problems with the tag. “Lunchbox might have been my first film. But I have been working for so long. I’ve done all kinds of things, ads, theatre. It’s never been about the money. I’m in such a satisfying place where it does not matter whether things are in my favour because of my age or not. ”
She’s enjoying this phase of life. “I have always been ahead of my times. And this is my USP. The fact is I’m not clamouring for roles 17-year-olds or even 24-year-olds are hankering for. Whatever I am doing is out of the security of being who I am at my age,” says the 30 plus actor.
Nimrat is an ardent fan of Vidya Balan and considers the actress as her role model. “I love her. She is fantastic. She epitomises someone who has gravity in her performances. She has got it all. Who wouldn’t want to be an actor like her? Who wouldn’t want to do movies like the ones she does? She is an industry in herself.” Any special dreams? “My dream is to have a unique and spectacular life. An ever changing one. There should be nothing predictable.’’
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