Mirror Mirror On The Wall Who Are You Fighting After All
[Music]
hello
sorry wrong number
you guys must be wondering
um actually i make sure i answer all my
calls from known unknown all numbers
or if i’m unable to receive a call i
make sure that i call back
[Music]
anyway
film actor i’ve been doing marathi films
almost for last 14 years
but for me
it’s been like living a dream
dream
i remember when i went to a theater to
watch a cinema first time in my life
i must have been like five six years old
and to watch that screen was mesmerizing
since then i started dreaming of being
on that big screen one day myself
since then
i established
product had my first relationship
at the age of five or six
and that was
with my mirror
so like most of you sitting here
i was absolutely clueless about film
industry
my parents come from governments of
servants they are like my father was in
the army my mother worked in uh central
northwest depot so basically absolutely
no filmy background a very humble middle
class background
they met here in dehu road and got
married in arandi which is why rnd is a
very very special place for me
nobody had anything to do with film
industry apart from watching films
no it’s not just a filmy dialogue i can
prove it
so this is my mother
she was pregnant with me for four months
this was the last time she performed on
stage and i danced into the world
so i’ve been dancing doing
drama
everything since then on stage
but i never thought i would make it into
marathi film industry
we never spoke marathi at home because i
also studied in an army school so i
never learned marathi language
technically apart from the very little
exposure i had from my aji or azoba but
trust me it was really very very little
so how did i land here
when i entered my teens
i would go for
various auditions in pune
and there was this beauty pageant
edition one fine day and i thought
there’s no point going because you can
see how tall i am
only five two
but my mother forced me
i went for the audition and uh to my
surprise i was selected
not just that i ended up winning the
runners-up with 5 out of 7 subtitles
which i believe was a history
but that was my moment when i realized
you know we restrict our own selves
so
that’s where i realized okay now onwards
i am going to go for everything that
i can
probably go for like auditioning for
films
television show
modeling and films not because i thought
i could do it all
but
i did not know which route to take to to
reach my dream destination so i was like
let’s knock
let’s see which door opens
and that’s how i ended up for a marathi
television show audition
i took half an hour to read half page
dialogues
but my makers were looking for a dancer
and they thought you know this girl can
speak marathi because it’s not greek for
her so we’ll give her the opportunity to
learn
yes after that obviously i worked hard
on the language tried to learn it
reading listening speaking practicing
now this was something i could do or
change about myself or improve about
myself but there were other things that
i couldn’t change
or wouldn’t like to change given an
opportunity
for example my voice
so when i did a film garba salanga where
i had only two scenes
i wasn’t allowed to dub for my own
scenes because my makers thought
i can prove that to you
can you have the clippings
[Music]
anyway but today very recently i got an
opportunity or an offer to dub for the
biggest indian cinema bahubali in
marathi language for the uniqueness in
my voice but
here i realized again that sometimes
the
qualities that you think are inferior or
you might think are weaknesses for
yourself can eventually become your own
strengths or identities
okay
so there’s one more thing that i chose
and decided not to change
that is
my name
how many of you know any other sachin
tendulkar wanting to become a cricketer
have you heard of it
i haven’t
my husband says there is a shahrukh khan
who plays for an ipl team
do you know which team
punjab
okay i’m not very sure i don’t follow
ipl but i’m sure that shahrukh khan
doesn’t want to become an actor so he
has a safe life
but
when i began in
doing mainstream cinema and marathi when
my first film was launching
a lot of people suggested i should
change my name to avoid all the
confusion in future but my parents who
had given me the name
uh and my maker who decided to launch me
said kaisnaya she’s from a different
generation so there’s not going to be a
clash don’t worry just go with it
but trust me after that what happened
was not so easy to face
a lot of embarrassment confusion awkward
moment
i used to get calls for auditions events
uh meetings just to know that they were
looking for the others
in fact at one event they had a huge
poster of sonalita
and when i was entering they played
[Laughter]
[Music]
i still went on the stage and made kasa
made a speech
this is a funny funny story so at my
first about show where i was nominated
for my first film bakura namdee khotari
and i meet a senior actor who comes and
tells me
your name is sonali kulkarni
you look like varsha’s gawker
my dear what is your originality
and how are you going to craft your own
career
that was heartbreaking
i didn’t know what to react
so i was like
clueless
and my thought break
with an announcement
which said the best actor for this
evening female actress
when i went on the stage i did not know
how to react because i was still lost in
the previous thought
and i was like
breaking through the films getting
introduced
is not everything
i needed to create my own identity for
my existence
i think when you say this uh that
says
then the universe starts conspiring for
you
something like that
unreal happened for me while i was
receiving the award somebody sitting in
the audience a filmmaker called ravi
zadhar
decided to cast me in nataranga
and we all know what happened after that
absolutely became my
primary introduction
and i know that it will be my
identity forever it’s been over a decade
since nadrang released but i’m still
basking in the glory of that nymph the
apsara the diva
that’s it
end of my journey
actually no
it’s just an interval here
imagine you are standing on a beach okay
uh not moving an inch still
just near the sea where the wave is
touching your feet
what is going to happen
let me tell you what happens you will
think
yeah
you will sink under your own weight
if you remain still it’s a sand
gravity
okay and but if you decide to take a
step further
will you leave a footprint behind
which will again get washed away with
another wave my dear friends
so what do you do
keep walking
keep creating more footprints
and that is exactly how i decided to
take my career ahead
that wasn’t easy it’s not like walking
on the beach in reality you know it’s
like if you want to break out from that
box and the type cast image as an actor
it takes a lot it’s a risk of losing
what you’ve already created there are so
many people wanting to replace you no
work waiting uncertainty blah blah blah
but i decided to take that risk
i waited for two years for the kind of
roles that i wanted to do and not do
keep repeating stuff like what i was
already doing
imagine 10 years out of my career two
years i was waiting which is 20
off
my peak time and they say heroines have
a very very limited screen space or
screen
career
but then i took the risk in fact
i thought let’s use this time
to work on your own skills because i was
never trained in anything i never
learned dancing acting filmmaking any
drama modulation whatever i did not get
any technical training so i was like a
blank slate
i decided to utilize that time in
developing my own skills
and when i thought the wait was too long
i started approaching filmmakers on my
own who i believed would experiment
and at that time when i was trying to
find my foothold in the industry
i was fighting a lot of stereotypical
ideas about how a marathi film actress
should or should not be
for example glamour stardom
uh
diva dancer all these things
were never associated with a marathi
female actor
for example beauty now the concept of
beauty can differ for you and me but
stereotypically beautiful girls
were only meant to be shobhichabhali and
not substantial actors
so i had to now fight my own beauty
the topic mirror mirror on the wall who
are you fighting after all
everything i was i had to fight
prove redo myself
so i decided
those two years like i said i was
waiting and then the wait was over by
approaching filmmakers i should do films
which would break my identity
starting from my looks
i did a film called ajinta with nitin
desai and experimented with my look
i did a film called hampi where i went
for a tomboy look without any glamour
quotient in it i decided to do a film
like drama mother where i wasn’t drama
which means i wasn’t playing the title
role or i wasn’t even the heroine of the
film i was playing a very very um
supporting character who had a lot of
gray shades in it
in fact a lot of people asked me why
would i do this at the prime of my
career but
my only answer to that was i wanted
people to now take seriously
me as an actor
it’s like
you draw a line
and without touching it
or editing it
how do you make it look insignificant
you draw another line parallel to it
which is bigger and brighter
that’s quite simple but it’s not as
simple when you’re fighting your own
career
but these little steps that i took from
ajintha
to rama mother
took me there
to my dream role in poster girl
poster girl is a film which was based on
a true story
about female feticide fertility of women
and soil and it spoke about a lot of
issues that were very important in the
society then it made a huge impact in
the society as well as
winning a lot of accolades for me and
the film as well it went on to became
the biggest super hit of that time
here i’m proud to say that a very big
stereotypical myth
got shattered
that female-centric marathi cinema do
not do well on box office
in fact the film
left a huge impact on the society
for instance a man from nashik called
saying
um
he went and got his abandoned wife and
daughter back
because he had left her
i’m very proud to say that in india
today we have managed successfully to
reverse the girl child ratio which is
fabulous
how many of you imagined me as hiragani
none of you don’t shy away even my
producers did not
nobody thought this
urban girl could look like harikani
but then i went back went back to my
relationship
my mirror but this time i was not
enacting
anyone else’s part
in fact i looked in it
saw myself as hiragani
believed that i could be hircani
started working hard on becoming that
it’s always always it starts from you
imagining yourself first
then working hard on becoming that
person or that thing
and then my dear friend
you shall be seen
exactly how you want to be seen
i worked very hard to become the hair
candy that we all had heard of since our
childhood
i lost five to six kilos now we do that
that’s not a big deal
but i gave up on beauty regime for
almost a year imagine no eyebrows no
haircuts no nail manicure pedicure
facial bleach almost for a year
and i work in the most presentable
industry so it was very tough for me to
do that
in fact
i also learned how to milk cows because
i was playing a milkmaid
the most important and difficult part
was to develop
motherly instincts
every mother says
i had to become mother on screen
that was tough
but i spent a lot of time with my baby
the on-screen baby
anyway so all that really paid off
hilton he did amazingly
well on the box office critically
acclaimed we loved we got everything we
got all the love
one hearts thanks to chatrapati shivaji
maharaj
most importantly
i was talking about the footprints that
i wanted to leave behind
that started
coming into picture
thankfully these footprints don’t get
washed away because we as
a film industry people have the
privilege to create our films and
characters
that remain forever even after we are
gone
remember the call that i was talking
about
you know he actually called
i actually thought i was sitting on the
hot seat for for at least a minute
but then he called and asked me
to become a part of his family
now he does not have another son and he
was not asking me to marry
marry him but
he did
a short film in the pandemic to support
indian cinema representing tamil telugu
malayalam punjabi bengali and hindi
and he asked me to represent
marathi
the fact that i tried to retain my
authenticity while creating my new
identity
and this will inspire me to go ahead and
work in the same manner in future
but this wasn’t possible without the
industry support
so here i want to take you take an
opportunity to thank the entire marathi
film industry
for giving me the opportunity teaching
me keeping patience all the films i did
all the characters i played
current otherwise
thank you so much