Bard of Blood actor Sobhita Dhulipala: The welcomes are much warmer now

Sobhita Dhulipala says she has decided to detach herself from the result and is interested in experimental and niche work.

In an actor’s life, there comes a turning point when their career changes forever. That happened earlier this year for model-turned-actor Sobhita Dhulipala. She had done three Bollywood films — Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016), Chef (2017) and Kaalakaandi (2018). But, laurels came her way after she starred in the web series Made In Heaven, and how!

Sobhita’s tendency to take risks worked for her. “I’ve always taken up projects that I felt for. I’ve always been a risk-taker and it shows in my choice of films, too. It’s just that some paid off and some didn’t. Raman Raghav 2.0 took me to the Cannes Film Festival and opened my world view. Kaalakaandi and Chef may not have done well, but my Telugu film Goodachari was a super hit, and now, my Malayalam film Moothon is going to Toronto Film Festival,” she says.

The actor plays a RAW agent named Isha Khanna in Bard of Blood

And the 27-year-old doesn’t bother about results before taking up a project. “I’m so consumed with the idea to do good work that I’ve decided to detach myself from the result. I do experimental and niche work. I don’t think like ‘Let me wait and see how one does and then I’ll take up another project’. It was never the attitude. But yes, a lot of avenues have opened up and the welcomes are much warmer [after Made in Heaven’s success],” she shares with a laugh.

Sobhita will soon be seen in Netflix original series, Bard of Blood, which is an espionage thriller, and a far departure from her earlier roles. Talking about why she took up the project, Sobhita, who plays a RAW agent named Isha Khanna, says, “We think of agents like some distant, fantastical people. We forget that those are still beating hearts on the battlefield. The show is an inside view of the people that make up the whole system. There is so much to explore such as gender dynamics and how difficult it is to be strong in the face of fear.”

Prepping for the character of a RAW agent, in this upcoming series, was another challenge that the actor took head on, and realised that she was pretty good with action. “You’re only assigned to the position of a RAW agent after they’ve been through their fair share of tests. So, I cannot, at any point, afford to look like an amateur. There was a lot of training, and I soon realised that I’m pretty decent with action sequences,” she concludes.