Actor Shekhar Suman opened up about his infamous mid-air sex scene in the new Netflix series, Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar. In the scene, his nawab character performs a sexual act in an inebriated state, without realising that his partner, a ‘tawaif’ played by Manisha Koirala, is sitting behind him and not in front of him. In an interview, Shekhar said that the scene was unscripted, and that there’s more to it than just mild comedy.
It also served as his introductory scene in the eight-episode show, about the lives of courtesans and noblemen in pre-Independence Lahore. In an interview with Fever FM, Shekhar took the opportunity to explain the scene’s subtext. “The scene was made on the spur of the moment. Bhansali changed it completely, and had this ostensibly bizarre interpretation. He looked at me and said, ‘It has a bizarre sexual connotation, but there is a pathos to it’,” Shekhar began.
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He continued, “It’s layered, and there’s conflicting emotions in it. It’s paradoxical, about the fall from grace of a nawab, who goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. He’s trying to hang on to his nobility; he’s supercilious, but at the same time, servile to the British. He’s been reduced to nothing by the courtesans. And all of this can be felt in that scene. Manisha was looking at the tamasha, and the nawab making a mockery of himself. It needed to be perfectly balanced, even the slightest tinkering would have ruined it. It would’ve looked cheap or vulgar. But there are so many nuances to that scene, so much subtext…”
Shekhar said that the scene ends with his character making a bold prediction. “He talks about the British, and he admits that he has been given an important title, but says, ‘The day the British leave India, we will start fighting each other’. And that’s exactly what happened, which is paradoxical. When the British left, there was mass murder, riots, the Partition happened. The nobility crumbled. He accused Mallikajaan of using divide and rule as a policy as well, by separating men from their wives. His words carried weight, and he said all of it in that scene.”
In earlier interviews, the actor has spoken about the scene being improvised by Bhansali, who consulted him before filming it. He also said that he nailed the scene in one take, after which the crew thanked him profusely, because he prevented the shoot from continuing for hours on end. Also featuring Aditi Rao Hydari, Richa Chadha, Sonakshi Sinha, Sharmin Segal and Sanjeeda Sheikh, Heeramandi debuted on May first to mixed reviews.
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