Monika Panwar is back as Gudiya in Jamtara Season2

Sheetal

It was a newspaper article which led National Award- winner Soumendra Padhi and writers, Trishant Srivastava and Nishank Verma, to develop a fictional story around the phishing racket comprising students from Jamtara, a district of Jharkhand.

And that’s Jamtara, an underdog series packed mostly with newcomers besides performers like Dibyendu Bhattacharya and Amit Sial, which educates and entertains at the same time. The appreciation from the audience has brought another season of the 2020 show. The cast which was once fresh and raw is now full of seasoned actors.

As Gudiya in Jamtara, Monika Panwar, reprises her role and she is excited to watch it with the world on September 23 on Netflix.

Monika, who hails from Uttarakhand, is a National School of Drama graduate and is active in theatre. She says, “I always wanted to move to Mumbai and pursue acting but guess what, there’s a right time for everything. I feel there couldn’t be better start than Jamtara. The experience we had shooting for this series was no less than a learning curve but more so, it has a set a benchmark and I would never stop comparing my upcoming projects to the experience of being directed by Soumendra Padhi. We attended workshops to prepare for our roles in Jamtara—Sabka Number Ayega. That helped us get into the skin of our on-screen character seamlessly.”

With every character, actors have to unlearn and also unload their previous screen successes. Monika didn’t have the burden of the latter but now with the upcoming season, she is definitely feeling the pressure to live up to viewers’ expectations but at the same time has faith in director’s vision and the cast and crew’s hard work.

And does Monika feel that she has an advantage as a pass-out from the prestigious NSD? “It depends on how much you draw from your daily experiences as well as how much you read and learn about things. We have examples of great actors who entered the industry with proper educational qualification to support their talent and then there are others who are born to act. We don’t have to go very far. In Jamtara we have Sparsh Shirvastva, who plays Sunny, the main character. He is not a trained actor but he is someone I respect and learnt so much from,” she explains.

As to look her part in Jamtara, Monika feels costumes play an important role in shaping up of a character. She says, “For Jamtara, I had to de-glam and wear plain salwar-suits for more than a month before the shooting started. It was to get used to the traditional attire which is not my choice of attire in real life, and also to live the character to make it look natural and organic.”

As of now, besides Jamtara Season 2, Monika has two more projects, a film titled Dukaan to be released in theatres and another Netflix series called Choona, which stars Namit Das and Jimmy Shergill. For Monika, if not a challenge, it is definitely tough for an actor to re-enact a character after a considerable time gap because of multiple seasons. “Because we move on and grow as a person in the mean time. But then again that’s what makes it interesting and fun, isn’t it?” Monika signs off.