Actor Raima Sen is stepping back onto the Bollywood screen, and the excitement is palpable. After a four-year gap since her last Hindi release, Mai (2022), the actor is eager for her next chapter. “It’s always great to be back in the Hindi industry but I must admit ab ki thoda time laga,” she shares candidly.
The industry journey has been long, Raima Sen is currently celebrating 26 years since her debut in Godmother, as she prepares for Hansal Mehta’s Family Business slated for later this year. Recalling her break, she says, “It has been decades. I still remember getting the offer when I was a 17-year-old girl living in Kolkata and Vinay Shukla had come down. He was screen testing, he said, ‘Do this film, [you] fit the bill.’”
“At that time I was studying and was petrified to act with actors like Shabana Azmi; every day I was scared to shoot, but I told myself, just try it. If you can’t manage, I won’t join films, I will do something else,” she recalls.
Raima says her parents, Moon Moon Sen and Bharat Dev Varma, ensured she and her sister, (actor-Riya Sen) find their way, “My mum, in fact my parents, never asked the makers to cast us as sisters in either industries. In fact they were, ‘You want to join movies, take this journey alone, please.’ Also they never told us what to do, never came on the sets with us, and so as teenagers, whatever mistakes we made our parents were, ‘It’s your mistake.’ And that made us better, I feel, as artists, as we learned all along.” She smiles, adding, “Good point I am still working, so still have time, all thanks to my grandma’s genes that we still look like we can run around trees (laughs).”
Today, her professional approach is different. “When I was young I was all over the place, choosing whatever came our way in Bollywood, but now I am more responsible,” she explains, before touching on the realities of the industry. “But I cannot be too choosy with roles here as there is too much competition in this industry compared to regional ones like the Bengali industry.”
The actor’s view on the debate around favouritism and privilege. “I feel in Bollywood, however favouritism and nepotism is a forever burning topic but the fact is only the fittest survives. I mean you see only the best ones are on the top,” she asserts. “Obviously it can fetch you work as parents and grandparents built that legacy for us and we will get our chances because of that, but the point is how best we use those chances and survive.”
The weight of being Suchitra Sen’s granddaughter and Moon Moon Sen’s daughter created intense pressure early on. “Expectations were always there,” she says. “But I couldn’t become them from my first film and that took a long time for me and it was after Chokher Bali Okay, so she is Raima and she can act.’
‘Now that legacy is more of a blessing, now people know of me as well and it’s much easier for me. Things changed especially in Bengali cinema and in Bollywood it’s still somewhat the same, here people still want me to carry that legacy, but I want to move beyond for sure.”
While excited about her return, the actress remains haunted by lost projects. “So many films we did back then never found a release. I did such good ones all with the best of directors but in vain couldn’t see the light of the day,” she reveals. “I still feel for many of them, but one with Tanuja Chandra titled Raakh, co-stars Vir Das and Rajeev Khandelwal, it’s really sad and painful. We had finished dubbing and everything. A very good story back in the day, it’s been quite long now.”
