When actor Sakshi Tanwar accepted the part of vengeful Sheel Chaudhary in the new series Mai, she knew it would be a challenge — though she perhaps didn’t realize just how challenging it would be. “Mai genuinely has been the toughest role of my life,” says the veteran actor, beloved for her breakout performance as ideal daughter-in-law Parvati in Hindi-language series Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii. “I have done television where we wouldn’t get time off for weeks on end, but still I have never been so drained by anything I have ever done before.”

Created and produced by pioneering casting director, writer, and acting coach Atul Mongia, Mai finds Tanwar’s character, a timid mother and nurse from Lucknow, India, leading a double life that threatens to tear her family apart. Seeking to avenge her daughter Supriya’s death, Sheel accidentally kills an organized crime boss and finds her life forever upended. 

“She’s scaling a wall and doing things that you wouldn’t expect from a regular woman,” Tanwar says. “She’s getting thrashed, she’s thrashing others — it’s really very exciting because you see her in a totally different world, which is dominated by men from the underworld. She’s a normal woman who’s doing things her way and allowing herself to flow with whatever is happening. That makes it very interesting.”

Queue: Was there a film or a television series that made you fall in love with acting?
Sakshi Tanwar: The realization that acting gives me immense joy happened while shooting a series called Rajdhani in Delhi in 2000. I clearly remember being intrigued by the fact that I could mold myself into another character completely. It gave me the confidence to go forward with [acting]. 

What do you remember about your first big role?
ST: My first big role was, of course, Parvati Agarwal from the daily soap, Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki. It was a long journey of eight years and everything changed after that. The success and the popularity — I had never ever dreamt that something like this could happen to me. I’m blessed and really grateful for that show.

How did Mai come to you? 
ST: In December 2019, I [was invited] to audition for the lead role. That’s when I went to meet Atul Mongia, the director of our series. We did this workshop where we tried performing two to three very intense scenes. In one of the scenes, a fight sequence happens. It demanded a lot of physical as well as emotional energy. By the time I got back home, I had received a text saying, “We are very happy, and we would like to take this forward.” 

In some ways, this character is an unlikely center for a crime drama — she’s a nurse and mother, who is also interrogating and fighting criminals.
ST: It was a very challenging role, but at the same time a very fulfilling one, too. I got to portray a range of emotions, and the journey from being a meek woman to a merciless one was great; I really enjoyed every bit of it. In the start, Sheel’s world is a very typical, happy family sort of a world — she’s happy and she tries to make those around her happy as well. But then this world starts slipping out of her hands and she falls into a morass, coming out of which seems more and more impossible. The more she wants to protect her world and keep it clean, the dirtier it becomes. 

All her family members also keep getting entangled. By the end of it, she herself doesn’t know how deep into this mess she is. Sheel — who’s such a soft person and who talks to everyone lovingly, until the very end — has changed to such an extent that when you see the Sheel of the first episode and the Sheel of the last episode, you’d think they were two different people. But she’s still trying to make things right. That’s the irony of it — the more she tries to fix things, the messier they become. It’s the journey of a mother who lost her daughter and her entire purpose now in life is to find out how this happened or who was behind this, to find justice for her daughter. 

You see the toll that Supriya’s death takes on Sheel’s relationships, especially her marriage to husband Yash, played by Vivek Mushran.
ST: Yash has a medical problem, so he’s not able to contribute much to the running of the house. Sheel is also working. She wanted to become a doctor but couldn’t, so she works as a nurse in Geeta Bhavan, where she tries her best to help those in need. Through the series you’ll see that Yash is very understanding, very caring, and so is Sheel, but her focus shifts with her daughter’s death and that takes a toll on their relationship. She can’t explain it to Yash, no matter how hard she tries, and then she thinks no one else will understand. 

As she keeps holding onto Supriya’s death, everyone else gets left behind in the process. The frustration of not being able to find out who is behind Supriya’s death is taken out on [her family]. She is out late all the time, so all her relationships start drifting away from her.

How did you prepare for this journey as an actor? 
ST: What really helped was that Atul sir gave me this graph to follow with each and every character; more than scenes, what helped was the backstory we discovered in the workshops. But what I enjoy most is going on set and delivering something raw. 

The action sequences in this show are quite unique because they involve a very ordinary person getting involved in bizarre situations.
ST: She’s a real woman who has never been exposed to such a life and she’s doing all sorts of things — she’s loading a dead body onto a trolley, dragging it downstairs, putting it in an ambulance. Guns are being fired; people are being killed ruthlessly. Initially I was in a very anxious mood whenever we had to do action scenes. Once, I had to scale a wall and was being shown how, and I genuinely thought I would never be able to do it. But when I did, I enjoyed it so much because I would have never done anything like this in my life. I had such a protected childhood, so I ended up limiting myself a lot, but this was quite liberating. The script needed it and it wouldn’t look real otherwise. I also pushed myself, and I am glad I did. 

How was the experience of working with both of your directors, Atul Mongia and Anshai Lal?
ST: Both my directors are sweethearts. They’ve really helped me live with this character and establish the kind of balance that was needed. I don’t think I’d have been able to bring that balance to the character all by myself. The workshops I did with Atul sir . . . He is very good with emotional development. And Anshai sir is so good with executing that emotion. Sometimes he would come in and tell me an entirely different way of doing it, and it would make so much of a difference. Anshai sir and Atul sir have quite different ways of thinking, and the scenes ended up getting the best from both of them. 

What was it like working with the cast of Mai?
ST: The cast of Mai is one of its strongest points. There was so much give and take that was happening between the actors all the time and there was beautiful layering taking place when they came together because the characters were all so distinct. I consider myself fortunate and blessed that it was such a talented cast and crew and that I got to work with each one of them.

How does it feel to know that this show is going to be launched globally across 190 countries?
ST: Right now, I feel like a student who just got done with her exams, really big ones. And when results come months from now, I’ll see it then. But I do feel like I’ll pass the exam.