People werent convinced I could play negative roles: Swastika Mukherjee

Actor Swastika Mukherjee says her pursuit of playing a character with grey shades ended with her latest digital outing “Escaype Live”, which came after years of convincing people that she could pull off such roles.

The Disney+ Hotstar social thriller series takes a deep dive into the horrific realities of social media. It premiered on the streamer on May 20.

On the show, Mukherjee plays the role of Mala, who develops an unhealthy obsession with her employee after discovering her secret of moonlighting as a restaurant hostess and Fetish Girl — her online avatar on the Escaype Live app.

Mukherjee said when the show creator and director Siddharth Kumar Tewary approached her for the project, she was taken aback because her experience of more than two decades in the industry had taught her that actors were cast for negative parts only if they “looked a certain way”.

“The show was offered to me in 2019, way before even Paatal Lok released and gained popularity. So I was quite surprised when this came my way. I even asked Siddharth what made him think that I could pull it off. “Its because people have set notions in their minds when they want to cast somebody for a negative role. They think one has to look a certain way, have a certain kind of personality to play that. For a long time, I was looking to play a negative part but people were not quite convinced that I could do it,” Mukherjee told

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