Karan Tejpal’s Stolen, which recently started streaming on Prime Video, has Abhishek Banerjee’s fine act. But along with him, Mia Maelzer is also getting a lot of accolades for her performance as a tribal woman. She spoke about the movie and her experience of preparing for it in an interview with us.
Mia Maelzer on preparing to play Jhumpa in Stolen, “I went to meet surrogate mothers in Bengal, it was a life-risking event”
That is quite a performance of a tribal woman on the run in Stolen. How did someone as urbane as you land up playing such a role?
I come from a very unique family, which is from both urban and rural spaces. My father comes from a very erudite reputed Bengali family of some great people in sports, science, law, cinema and arts and mother comes from a family which belongs to a tiny Himalayan village of Nepal; those have decent contribution in country’s democracy. Whereas I was brought up in an English medium school in the suburban town called Panihati until I reached University of Calcutta almost unaware of our family history.
When did you become aware of the fact that you were from such a distinguished family?
Everyone was very casual about teaching me the importance of their contribution to society; they only ensured I was given same education and responsibility. Hence, I slowly learnt everything without any pride attached to my craft. I also ended up with a scholarship at the National School of Drama and once you become part of an institution like that, where most of your batch mates come from rural India, there is no way you stay super urban anymore.
When did you become interested in cinema?
My lens was also altered as a child because I grew up watching great world cinema and taking part in national sports camps as an athlete. My mother ensured I learnt Indian classical dance along with basic ballet and Granny exposed me to folk theatre, music and dance. My nanny Komoladi, who helped my granny and mom at home, passed away last week. She was from Metiabruz. Our house-help Bhagwan was from Odisha. One of my aunt was married into a family in a village which owned huge mango and litchi orchards, where we would spend hours with farmers. My brother and I also grew up with a lot of Anglo-Indian family influence at home which is a long story of its own kind. Hence there was no particular personal struggle for me to understand the class spectrum that our society offered ever.
What did you get from this multi-cultural upbringing?
Everything was exposed to me in its full rawness. What I discovered is that all are essentially human being first. Rest are all just socially constructed boxes. It is automatically very easy for me to play any role, hence at a surface level. Complex part is to play through the situations where my characters confront extraordinary choices.
Did the character require a lot of preparation?
Yes, the role of Jhumpa did require a lot of research and preparation. My teacher Dilip Shankar sir already prepared me lightly about this script and team who visited me at home in Jaipur. I knew about Gaurav Dhingra and held huge respect for him as the producer of Angry Indian Goddesses already but the director Karan Tejpal, I discovered only after we met three years before we shot Stolen. It was slightly before COVID, so we had a lot of time to prepare too.
How did Karan help you prepare for your role?
He would make me study a lot of films, news, medical history and also encouraged me when I went to meet surrogate mothers in Bengal. It was a life-risking event for me and till date I don’t know the location where exactly I met them beyond the fact that it was somewhere in the Delta. We then had to change the dialect of the role based on the women I found there. Had to put on slight weight since I played a new mother yet had action sequences, so my brother, who is a physical performance specialist, worked on my movement literacy.
Even the prosthetic cut over my belly had to be different from the regular caesarean birth cases. Unlike horizontal cut it had to be vertical to avoid being caught as it’s not a very straight forward process legally. Oh there are many such details I had to put into building this role. Plus, I am not a mother biologically nor had an abortion ever, so I had to understand motherhood and child loss from only anecdotal experiences of others. I adopted my cat during this making just to understand motherhood in a better way.
How much of a background check did you do on Jhumpa?
Karan spoke with many doctors and legal experts, so did I and we would discuss long hours about the journey of migrant women and surrogate mothers. We were lucky (that) I had access through a few documentary filmmakers’ into the underbelly of Bengal who knew some women; those who run this underground business in undisclosed localities of the country. Since I didn’t visit with my video camera to record them, they opened up to me with their inner thoughts and fears. In fact, they wanted me to tell their stories. I love that trust.
A lot of your scenes require physical exertion. Was that tough on you?
Slightly yes. Sometimes because the geographical terrain was not easy to adapt to. Lots of heat, dust, cold and wind in the jungle did make me sick but we didn’t stop shooting for we had very little budget to finish our work. Most of us, including actors, DoP team, director Karan, we come from strong sports backgrounds and hence all fought with full endurance. We all had single goal as a team – to find the baby, so we didn’t mind this fight. Physically it wasn’t as tough as it was emotionally for me to shoot Stolen. Thanks to my director and teachers, I was made ready for this.
What are Abhishek Banerjee and Shubham Vardhan like as co-stars and friends?
They are both simply lovely boys as co actors. However, during the process of our film’s making, our director Karan ensured that we don’t spend too much time together for the sake of the roles we three played in Stolen. Since we all come from theatre backgrounds and particularly Delhi stage is a common factor for us all, we got along very smooth creatively. The language of filmmaking we three believe in is also almost same, so at all points it felt like working with batch mates. There is almost no age gap amongst us, so there was no hierarchy in place despite the fact Abhishek brought in his commercial cinema experiences and Shubham and I brought in Film and Drama School expertise respectively.
We were all learning from each other under the guidance of our director as if it was the first time we were shooting a film. That honesty is the chemistry that you discover about us on screen. In fact, AB taught me to fight for my own rights on floor to a great length in business to survive. Shubham taught me patience. They are both magic. We are that perfect team. Blessed.
Are we seeing you in anything else soon?
My upcoming films are one Indo-American feature film in Telugu and Khoya language shot inside the forest sharing the borders of four Indian states at Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Telengana. The director of the film is an America born Indian filmmaker named Aditya Vempaty. Nandita Das and Nassar are the two senior actors in the film, along with all local theatre actors of Hyderabad and Adivasi tribe of this region. It is also the last film late Shyam Benegal sir was mentoring at its writing stage. The film is based on climate impact and it’s a period drama. For now, that’s all I can talk about beyond the fact that Stolen’s DoP Ishaan Ghosh is also part of this team.
The other film is a short film based out of Darbhanga district of Bihar, where I speak Maithili language and the story is based on a child’s sense of belonging and identity. Actor Gagandev Riar is also part of this short film directed by Omi Gupta. Beyond these two, everything else are at too early stages of filmmaking right now to mention.
That’s quite a bit and all very impressive
I also continue my academic career as a theatre and film coach across the world associated with various schools and universities and film projects, which take up a lot of my time to fill the gap when I wait for the right script. My focus is now to ensure if I can bring my internationally released criticality acclaimed work The Braid by Laetitia Colombani to India since it’s already available on Netflix France, and various other channels across Europe, including HBO and Air France, etc.
More Pages: Stolen Box Office Collection , Stolen Movie Review
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