Manav Kaul, Tillotama Shome open up about doing intimate scenes in Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper: ‘Makers were concerned about comfort, followed good hygiene’

The series, written by Sumit Purohit and Puneet Krishna, not only got Kaul to play the lead character — who goes from being an honest, middle-class family man to a sought-after object of desire — but also made him work with an impressive bunch of actors, including Tillotama Shome. Set in Noida, the show revolves around Tribhuvan Mishra, who to tackle his financial troubles, starts moonlighting as a sex worker that brings him close to Bindi (Shome), the wife of a sweetmeat shop owner who also happens to be a gangster.

 

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Talking about her character, Shome says, “In Konkona Sensharma‘s The Mirror, a segment in Lust Stories 2 (2023), I thought my character had a coming of age arc. It was a story where you are able to relate to women’s desires. After that to be part of a show like Tribhuban Mishra, where the women characters have agency and they are articulate about their desires felt like we are no longer pretending to be kids who are just holding hands. We are grown up and behaving age appropriately.” The series is directed by Krishna and Amrit Raj Gupta.

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When Shome read about Bindi and her journey on the show, she was fascinated with her character’s deep love for Bollywood and her deep-rooted romantic ideas. “Bindi is almost enslaved to the idea of romance. She has this larger-than-life obsession with films. To play this role felt like entering the realm of fantasy. The character also intrigued me. Being the wife of a gangster, she is surrounded by violence. She can fall asleep even when there is extreme violence taking place around her. Her romantic delusions are her survival mechanism. How can one pass up the opportunity to play such a character?,” says Shome, who also plays a key role in the recently-released Kota Factory 3.

This series has brought Kaul and Shome —two fine actors who are known for their nuanced handling of the characters they essay — together on screen for the first time. While Kaul was “a bit nervous” and hoped that Shome would enjoy working with him, the latter was worried about her language skills. “The writing is beautiful. Puneet is good with Hindi and Urdu. Manav also writes in Hindi. There was a lot of nervousness about whether my Hindi would become a stumbling block on the sets. But I got so much support from Manav and other actors,” she shares.

 

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During the shoot, Shome also discovered that Manav is a good dancer. “When he realised that I had kind of frozen with fear about the dance steps, he asked me to relax. It was nice to work with a co-actor who wanted me to succeed,” she recalls. What Kaul enjoyed most is how the show packs “surprises and humour”. “The show is absolutely commercial and at the same time entertaining,” says Kaul, who features in the 2017-movie Tumhari Sulu and series The Fame Game (2022), among others.

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Since Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper has several intimate scenes, was there a dedicated coordinator during the shoot? Initially, Shome had asked for one. But she changed her mind later. When she met Krishna and Gupta over dinner before the shoot began, they explained to her how they planned to shoot the scenes and showed how they had storyboarded those sequences. “They were concerned about my comfort. I thought it was not necessary to have another person on the sets who would negotiate and communicate what an actor needs. Instead, I knew I could communicate directly with Puneet and Amrit,” she says.

According to Kaul what put them at ease was that everyone knew about every shot and how they were going to shoot them. Both the actors, however, agree that “The makers of Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper followed good hygiene on the sets and the rules during the filming of intimate scenes”.