How Tannishtha Chatterjee did a play and a film during cancer treatment: ‘Art, humour and community’

In late 2024, the actors Tannishtha Chatterjee and Sharib Hashmi were shooting for Ananth Mahadevan’s adoption-themed drama Pastt Tense. Chatterjee and Hashmi talked about creating a play together, possibly a comedy with musical elements. In the ensuing weeks, Chatterjee was all set to meet Hashmi to take the project forward when she learnt that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

A mammography had revealed that the disease was in an advanced stage. A single mother, who is also caring for her own ailing mother, 45-year-old Chatterjee thought of cancelling the meeting with Hashmi.

“I wondered, what am I doing – a play?” she told Scroll. “But something told me that if I went home, I was going to feel depressed. Sharib made me speak to his wife, who has had a relapse of mouth cancer five times. She spoke to me for a very long time. She gave me so much positivity. After I put down the phone, I told Sharib, this is it, let’s do a play on the very subject.”

That play, Breast of Luck, was written even as Chatterjee underwent painful chemotherapy alongside completing her second feature, Full Plate. Directed by Leena Yadav, Breast of Luck was recently premiered at the G5A cultural centre in Mumbai.

Another show will be held on February 4, which is World Cancer Day, at the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival. There will be further performances on February 11 at the Mumbai edition of National School of Drama’s annual theatre festival and on February 13 and 14 in Lucknow.

Breast of Luck stars Chatterjee as Sheela, a singer, and Hashmi as Arun, a stockbroker. Their relationship is stymied by Sheela’s cancer diagnosis. Arun steps up to provide Sheela with support in the form of cheesy jokes and pun-laden songs. Sheela learns to cope with physical changes, despondency and loneliness.

Breast of Luck is light-hearted, comedic and heartwarming despite tackling one of the worst diseases known to humankind. Chatterjee and Hashmi also perform the songs – Chatterjee is a trained classical singer with a fabulous voice, while Hashmi is a more than adequate singer.

For Chatterjee, it was vital to face terrible news with courage, to work on the play and the film even while enduring treatment, uncertainty and emotional upheaval. In an interview, Chatterjee spoke about her inspirational journey, why Breast of Luck makes you laugh as well as occasionally tear up, and her film Full Plate. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

How has Breast of Luck been received?

The feedback has been mostly positive. My doctors watched the final show at G5A. They liked it a lot. They felt that not only cancer patients, but also patients who are going through very serious illnesses should watch something that is talking about laughter and companionship.

Breast of Luck includes footage of you undergoing chemotherapy, where you sing and make jokes even while receiving painful injections. How did you and Sharib Hashmi arrive at the play’s tone?

The idea of the play came from doing something that wasn’t very heavy and serious – of laughing at ourselves even in the darkest moments. After I got the diagnosis and I told my friend, the actor Indraneil Sengupta, he joked, they are just breasts, cut them off. That line is in the play.

I am a person who has a certain lightness. I feel that humour is very underrated. Humour makes conversations easier, makes things palatable.

I came up with the story idea, the structure and the characters. Sharib filled out the dialogue for his character Arun. I also wanted Sharib to say certain things about the media and art, which were added.

I was working throughout my treatment. Both the play and the film gave me the strength to fight. My mind was occupied. I was turning my pain into something creative. I wasn’t feeling that life has come to an end.

The hospital footage of me singing and screaming – if it had been an act, it would have been bizarre, but it was real. Singing was my coping mechanism. The injections were so painful that I sang or made fun of myself to divert my mind. That was my way of dealing with it.

The film was shot by Deepti Gupta on the last day of my chemotherapy in the middle of 2025. I still have a lot of terrible nerve pain on my entire left side after the surgery and the radiation. I used to take painkillers, but I stopped. Sharib was worried about how I would be able to perform, but I didn’t want to continue taking the pills.

I am in my mid-forties, so acting roles are limited. Anyway, my skin tone has always been a problem in terms of getting work.

I have lost weight. I have been having problems with my insurance company. I have an old mother to take care of. I have a young child. Nothing was working for me. I could have gone into severe depression.

When I got the diagnosis, I wondered, where had I gone wrong? I have followed such a healthy lifestyle. I am one of the happiest people amongst my friends. I don’t have the cynicism that a lot of artists have. The play helped me – it’s real and truthful but I also wanted to laugh about it.

Writing and performing a play in your condition requires immense physical and mental strength. How did you manage?

Work and friends. My friends supported me a lot. In this entire journey, what I have experienced is a lot of beautiful human beings.

There were times when my friends would take my mum to the doctor because I couldn’t. My younger sister, who lives in New York, said to me, you have to reach out to your friends. You cannot be that person who is so strong that she doesn’t need help. The moment I reached out and said, I am in deep shit, they were there.

Humour, art and community – that’s all human beings need. Art is such a healer. Expression is what makes humans different from animals – that we are storytellers. We imagine, and that imagination leads to the biggest conflicts and nonsensical things, but it also leads to beauty.

During my treatment, I have been reading books and poems. I unsubscribed from all OTT platforms. I have hardly watched anything. I practise music and yoga. I go to the park and do nothing. I don't take my mobile.

The importance of art, laughter and community in the process of healing – that’s where I derive my mental strength from. Otherwise, it would have been extremely difficult.

You have been an acclaimed actor since the early 2000s. In 2019, you wrote and directed your first feature, Roam Rome Mein, which hasn’t been released yet. What made you take to direction? Will the play be adapted as a film too?

Let people watch the play first. If there is an offer, we’ll see. Many people who read the script told me, here’s a film. I told them that I have lost a breast making one film. I don’t want to lose the other one too. Let’s save that one.

After I got diagnosed, my dear friend Sandhya Mridul gifted me a diary and said, write a book, it will be your healing. I realised that this kind of writing isn’t my medium. Rather, performance is.

Even while I was acting, I had always written stories about things that had touched me. Parched, on which I collaborated with Leena Yadav, was partly inspired by a woman I met while shooting for Dev Benegal’s Road, Movie [2002]. It was fascinating – she was a village woman from Bhuj, a widow in her mid-forties, with a married son. She freely talked about sex and had a young lover on the phone.

Making a film is so difficult. Roam Rome Mein was produced by Eros International, but they went bankrupt, so they could not release the film.

Your new film Full Plate stars Kirti Kulhari, Sharib Hashmi, Monica Dogra, Indraneil Sengupta, Sachin Kavetham and Shubhangi Bhujbal. The film is about Amreen, who becomes a cook after her conservative husband is injured, which sets her on a path to self-discovery. How did Full Plate come about?

Full Plate was inspired by a real-life person who had worked for me for a few months. She was also working for another couple I knew. She told me once, I don’t understand it, even after eating such expensive food, he has acidity and she has anxiety. I was like, that is it.

But when I met the woman’s family, I realised that something else was going on there – there was domestic violence and control. Yet, the woman was always humouring things. If I had written an imaginary character, people would have said that I was trivialising it. But this was true. Of course, I took liberties with the story.

Full Plate is about a woman who doesn’t know about her quirks, her strengths, what she is capable of. All battles are not revolutionary – some of them are very quiet and involve taking just a little step forward, and that too is important. The film is about a quiet battle within Amreen.

Why did you pick Kirti Kulhari and Sharib Hashmi for the lead roles?

Kirti was somebody I had in mind even before I started writing. She fit the physical characteristics of the person on whom her character was based. We had also done a film together as co-actors, called Jal, so I knew her potential as an actor.

Even Amreen’s friend Sarita, played by Shubhangi Bhujbal, is based on another maid I know. She told me, have you watched Kabir Singh, you should, what a fultoosh mard he is [a real man].”

After I wrote my second draft for Full Plate, I told Sharib, this is a very different role for you. I wanted to cast someone who doesn’t look like a haraami [scoundrel], in fact he doesn’t know he is like that, he thinks he is a great guy. Many people said Sharib is too nice, but that is what I wanted.

The other thing that I wanted to explore was about what we wear. What you wear has nothing to do with how liberated you are. I remember shooting a film called Yellow Bus in the Middle East. There were both traditional and Westernised women on the sets. It didn’t mean anything – all of them were working and doing things.

These are very complex debates. Sometimes, what we wear is more about habits and the culture that we’ve grown up in than anything else. The film is travelling to a few festivals, after which we will figure out a release. It’s not a typical festival film, it is accessible.