Sonali Bendre shifted her focus from books to prime time slots for Broken News

Nonika Singh

A quintessential bookworm, Sonali Bendre is more of a reader than a watcher. Yet, as we bring you the ‘breaking’ news that Sonali plays an editor of a news channel Aamna Qureshi in the series The Broken News (streaming on Zee5), she did consume news which in today’s world she feels comes to you in newer and different ways.

With the show focusing on the TRP wars, she shares, “It holds a mirror to what is happening around today and takes you behind the scenes happenings/choices in the world of news.”

Mind you, unlike the sansani-khej news channels that abound today, The Broken News is more about truth than sensationalism. Based on the British series Press, which was about rivalry among newspapers, The Broken News has been adapted to make it relevant to the present times. Whether it is a brave attempt or not Sonali once again puts it rationally, “Bold is not always good. The point is if it’s good enough and correct enough and the show is just that. Boldness is sansani what we need is sach and this one is an eye-opener for sure.”

As she teams up with powerhouse of talent, the star of Paatal Lok, Jaideep Ahlawat, she reveals that while she has not seen his breakout series, she has learnt what an amazing actor he is, while working in this particular show.

Has the show made her more empathetic or disdainful of journalistic community, which is either loved or hated? She says, “No one should be just hated or loved.” Hateful and disdainful are words that do not exist in her lexicon as, “I don’t judge others for doing a job the way they have chosen to. I may not follow a certain path. But I don’t know what the compulsions are of those who are toeing a particular line.”

But what this cancer survivor knows for sure is how to beat life’s downside. What gave her the courage to fight the deadly disease was, “The day I stopped fighting and accepted (my reality) I survived.”

For The Broken News, as she stepped into the actor’s shoes after a seven year hiatus, she was a bit apprehensive, “Would I be able to overcome the brain fog and remember my lines.” But soon learnt, “if you never forget how to ride a bicycle”, acting too is forever imprinted. It isn’t as if she had not faced the camera in the interim period but it was for reality shows where she had the liberty to “be myself and say what I felt.”

On the landscape of entertainment, this actor who rocked in the nineties in movies like Sarfarosh and Hum Saath Saath Hain, observes, “What has changed is that content does not have to be pan-Indian. One can create entertainment for niche audience with niche stories. Voices can have a distinct flavour.”

And the medium of today, the OTT platforms, she opines have further facilitated different kinds of storytelling.

Back in time, acting may have been a ‘happy accident,’ today it’s as deep a commitment as heartfelt a passion and she would, “rather not be anywhere else.” Of course, she who runs a book club and is also an author of The Modern Gurukul: My Experiments with Parenting, is more than happy immersing herself in the pages of books too.

Her latest recommendation is December in Dacca by KS Nair and her reasons for citing it are, “Bangladesh war has not been delved into with such depth. Here is an interesting book talking about a great victory which I think was the last war that can be justified.”

While the author in her has taken a backseat for now, once ‘an actor always an actor’ is also ‘once a book worm always one.”

Back to The Broken News, the viewers should be watching it for, “in the age of information overload being well informed, to know what is the correct information and what is not is very important.”

And one bit of relevant information she is only too ready to divulge is her beauty secret, “Healthy living, sleeping well and taking care of your mental health.” Now, you know what makes her glow.