Actress Alpana Buch, known for playing Leela Shah, or Baa, in the popular television show Anupamaa, says she looks beyond her character’s harsh words to bring out the vulnerability and fear beneath her anger.
Discussing her approach to the role, Alpana said working on a daily soap requires actors to adapt quickly because scripts move at a rapid pace. She explained that when a dialogue makes Baa appear unnecessarily cruel or soft, she raises the concern with the team, while sometimes relying on subtle performance choices to change the emotional impact of a scene.
“On a daily soap the script is a moving train. You cannot stop it because you would have written the scene another way,” she said. “Sometimes one look, one pause, and one Gujarati shading in the Hindi is enough to shift the meaning.”
According to Alpana, Baa’s anger often masks a deeper sense of insecurity.
“I remember days when the page had Baa only scolding, and my instinct said she is also afraid—afraid of the house changing, afraid of being left behind,” she said.
Rather than altering the written dialogue, the actress said she chooses to play the emotion underneath it. “I did not rewrite the dialogue. I played the fear under the anger. The line stayed. The scene changed,” she added.
Alpana also described her preparation for emotionally demanding scenes, saying the tight schedules of daily television leave little room for lengthy rehearsals or extensive preparation.
“First I read the scene once for facts: who is in the room, what Baa wants, what she is not saying. Then I stop reading it as literature and start hearing it,” she said.
For Alpana, retaining the character’s emotional depth is essential to making Baa believable.
“If the audience only enjoys Baa as a villain, I have failed her. She can be unfair. She should not be empty,” she said.
She also stressed that Baa is quite different from her own personality. “If I feel like agreeing, forgiving quickly, or laughing off a slight, that is me. Baa does not let go so easily,” the actress said.
Alpana has been part of Anupamaa since its premiere in 2020 and has become closely associated with the character of Baa, the protagonist Anupamaa’s mother-in-law.
The Star Plus show also features Rupali Ganguly, Adrija Roy, Shivam Khajuria and Arvind Vaidya, among others.