Actress Soni Razdan is back with 'Call My Agent'

Soni Razdan been an usherette at the Old Vic Theatre in London, waited tables at a restaurant in Selfridges, and worked as an auxiliary nurse at a hospital emptying bedpans and cleaning toilets. She's been a low-profile star mom. But now at 65, the actor, trained at London's prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama, is readying for her own close-up.

As a veteran agent Treasa in Netflix's Call My Agent: Bollywood, who swans through the office with her dog Pankaj on a leash, she is a classic, a throwback to a more regal era when women exuded power by a mere twist of the pearls at their throat, and when an air of mystery was cultivated and celebrated.

Her character knows exactly who slept with whom, who was supposed to work with whom, and why someone had a nervous breakdown. "I saw her as someone who had been editor of something like Cine Blitz back in the day so she knows everyone and is like a mother figure to these young hungry agents," says Razdan, who is delighted with the show and a fan of the original in French.

"The only character not rushing around in the show is me. I am just gushing over my dog," she adds.

Her director Shaad Ali is thrilled with her.
She was a dream to work with, he says. "Such a good human being and doesn't come with any baggage on the set." And what sets she's been on, beginning with Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth when she was still at Guildhall, going on to bit parts in BBC2's Padosi and then packing her bags, coming to India and becoming part of the Hindi new wave cinema.

'We were all struggling'

From the aggressive sex worker in Shyam Benegal's Mandi (1983), where she shared a room with co-actor Neena Gupta and became lifelong friends, to being in Saaransh (1984) and falling in love with its director Mahesh Bhatt to being in the iconic TV series Buniyaad (1987), she has been part of some great work. "We were all struggling, trying to get the next job. It was a period of immense frustration because there were such few platforms,'' she recalls.

"We’d get so excited when our films would come out and then they would vanish. Actors have it much easier now, their work has such a shelf life. Most of us were unfit for the kind of movies being made and the roles being written for women. We had months and months of no work," she adds.

She worked on and off while raising her daughters — author Shaheen and actor Alia — till she had to take care of her younger daughter when she began her film career with Karan Johar's Student of the Year. "I travelled with her for a year when she went into the business, she was so young, only 17," recalls Razdan. There was so much to do. "She would do things like sprain her ankle. We would have to supervise her food, look after her diet," she says.

The family watchman

She calls herself the family watchman, calling it a big responsibility. She has also had to deal with the aftermath of her elder daughter's depression, and says she wonders sometimes if there was a turning point where things could have gone another way. "But you never know. Shaheen has always been a strong-willed young lady, and I have never been able to impose my will on my children. Eventually everyone has to find their own way through the jungle called life. You have to learn how to do things yourself," she says.