Malishka Mendonsa on playing Sarojini Naidu in ‘Freedom At Midnight’: ‘In my past life I was her’

Malishka Mendonsa as Sarojini Naidu in Freedom At Midnight

RJ-turned-actor Malishka Mendonsa, who essays the role of Indian political activist and poet Sarojini Naidu in the web series ‘Freedom at Midnight', speaks exclusively to mid-day.com about embarking on a journey of prosthetics, and a mammoth amount of history lessons to ace the character of The Nightingale of India in the Nikkhil Advani directorial.

Malishka Mendonsa played Sarojini Naidu as a child

Malishka recalls that when she was offered this role, she went back to her notes and reminisced about playing Sarojini Naidu as a child. "I dressed up as her for a freedom fighter meet. That particular kind of hair, that bindi, the saree. I loved her anyway. I probably read a few of her poems. First of all, we haven't seen her being represented at all in any of the historicals that we've seen. And so apparently, stature-wise also, and size-wise, etc, I kind of looked like her," she says.

Malishka was told she might not get the role

She went to the audition, clearly telling her casting agent that this was her, but it took the makers a long time to get back. "I was like, ‘Just let me audition'. And they were like, ‘You still may not get it because we're probably looking at someone who has a little bit of a Bengali accent'. So I was like, ‘How much time do you have? Is it a month or a week?' I was pretty determined. I said, ‘I'll learn it'."

‘Sarojini Naidu was not demure'

Malishka adds, "Nikkhil would keep walking me through what he thought Sarojini would be like because she's not a demure person. She was a modern feminist even back then, in the time leading up to independence, she was at the forefront of things. She was the governor of the United Provinces, and the first Indian woman to be the president of the INC. So these are large roles, and she was part of it in a largely male-dominated political scenario. So I was like, ‘I'll do this'. And then the prosthetics came into play. The excitement was important because the hard work was incredible."

When we told Malishka about not imagining her in the role of Sarojini Naidu, she explained how Nikkhil likened her to the political icon who was also a social disruptor. "I think in my past life I was her," she concludes with a jest.