Say Pia Bajpai and the first image that comes to mind are her vivacious looks, bouncy curls and a bubbly effervescence that has spilled over into most of her roles down South. Though her roles have been few and far in between, Pia has acted with the A listers in Kollywood and even made her debut in Mollywood through the film Masters which had Prithviraj in the lead. She then made an appearance in the 2014 Priyadarshan directed Aamayum Muyalum with Jayasurya in the lead. Now after three years, she has signed on for a bi-lingual in Malayalam and Tamil with Tovino Thomas in the lead.
It has never been a dearth of roles that prevented Pia from acting in Malayalam films sooner but her own insistence that the roles she sign on for fit her criteria. She explains, “I don’t want to use the term coming back to Malayalam. My first criteria is and will always be a good script. The story should appeal to me when someone is narrating it... Of course the final outcome is not in my hands. I firmly believe a good script will take time to come to you but when I heard the story of this film directed by B.R. Vijayalakshmi, I was immediately intrigued.”
When Pia elaborates on her role, her intrigue is obvious. “I play an organic farmer and a social worker who is a girl of today: modern in her thoughts, outlook and manner of dressing.” The shoot of the film has wrapped up and Pia is absolutely in awe of the director and her co-star Tovino. She terms her director Vijayalakshmi as a superwoman and quips, “I asked her to adopt me! She is a true leader in the sense that she knows how to extract performances from her whole team. She made me feel like a star every day.” About Tovino, she gushes, “He is a very good looking man as well as a good actor. I believe acting is a give and take process — if I cannot match pace with my co-actor or vice versa, the scene will not turn out well. We have to support and complement each other and that was there throughout the film. I look forward to working with Tovino again.”
The bi-lingual has Suhasini, Prabhu and Rohini in important roles. Pia who has worked in Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam films, shares, “It is the people who define the industry. Any film irrespective of the language becomes a good and enjoyable working experience when you work with the right people. By the same yardstick, any industry can be termed bad if you meet the wrong people. I have had amazing experiences with my teams including the Mollywood films I have done.”
Bollywood had been Pia’s dream for a long while and the gutsy girl worked her way up from scratch without any godfathers to reach where she is now. With a couple of good films under her belt, Pia is wary of signing on every film that comes her way. She was last seen in the Bollywood Mirza Juliet and is happy with the reviews that her performance garnered. “You are as good as your last film and if you do not get a good script, it does not matter how well you acted because you would go unnoticed. After Mirza… I have been getting a lot of offers - almost one every alternate day but nothing that is interesting. The industry works like that - you meet a lot of people every day and one day suddenly something clicks!” she states.
Coming back to the bubbly roles that come seeking her, Pia states that she is not bubbly in real life and adds that if she were to live her reel life persona in real, she would be termed as mad. She reasons, “The effervescent roles clicked and I began to be typecast into the bubbly slot and realising that I was getting stereotyped is why I took my sweet time in signing for this film in the South. I want to do serious roles and for that someone has to trust me with those characters.” While on the subject of serious roles, Pia has some thoughts on the art versus commercial films. Art films, she mentions are made on small budgets where the focus is less on glamor and more on the storyline. She adds, “I would love to do art house films; as actors we get worldwide recognition when these films go to festivals abroad. Suddenly your audience becomes bigger.” Before concluding, Pia shares her view on the way female actors are portrayed on screen. She says, “The roles are way better now. Earlier women were supposed to look good, sing songs and generally be arm candy but all that has changed. It is a golden time to be a female actor.”
