The ‘risky’ themes that united Konkona Sensharma, Pratibha Rannta and Anubhuti Kashyap for ‘Accused’

In the upcoming film Accused, a doctor at a hospital on the outskirts of London is swamped with allegations of predatory sexual behaviour. What makes the film unusual is that the accused is a woman.

Geetika Sen (Konkona Sensharma) is respected for her expertise as well as feared for her brusqueness. A series of complaints against Geetika not only threaten to derail her career but also drive a wedge in her marriage with the paediatrician Meera (Pratibha Rannta).

Anubhuti Kashyap’s Hindi film, written by Sima Agarwal and Yash Keswani, will be premiered on February 27 on Netflix. One of the movie’s key themes is doubt, Kashyap told Scroll. “There are always multiple ways to look at things – nothing is ever the absolutely correct path,” added the director of the web series Afsos and the film Doctor G. “Doubt is very important, but it’s very destructive too. That’s what we’ve seeded in the film, and not just within the relationship. I don’t like to jump to conclusions. I like to evaluate, sit with the facts or at least understand the facts and withhold judgment for a bit longer. This is how I am in real life as a person, which translated into the writing and making of the film and became its central idea.”

Sensharma was attached to the project early on, Kashyap said. “Once we got the script done, we were discussing possible casting options with Netflix and they were clear that it needs to be made with the best of performers. Koko’s came [Konkona] came up first and immediately all of us just connected to it, including [producer] Dharmatic and Netflix and the writers.”

Sensharma’s counterpart in Accused required a lengthier search. “We all had seen Laapataa Ladies at that time and Pratibha's name was up in the air,” Kashyap said. “We wanted to make it work, so we auditioned her. She did such a fab job in the test that we just didn’t think twice, we cast her.”

Sensharma adopted aggressive body language to play Geetika, who’s not exactly likable and who tends to rub people the wrong way. “A lot of it is intuitive and hard to exactly define,” she said about approaching her roles. “What really helps me is also the look – to go from outside to in. Like in Mr and Mrs Iyer, whenever I used to wear that yellow saree and the jewellery and hold the bag and the baby.I used to feel like Mrs Iyer. In Accused, I have not really worn clothes like this before. Walking down those corridors with that coat and that blazer and the heels clicking – that really gave me a sense of these power corridors, so to speak.”

Pratibha Rannta’s notes for Meera was to ensure that she would be entirely different from Geetika. “I am to myself – I got that restraint in my performance so that both the characters can come together,” Rannta said. “Both characters can’t be loud. For them to come together and for the chemistry to work, I needed to restrain myself. Meera is more of a nurturer.”

Accused is set in the United Kingdom and not India because of its plot and the lesbian marriage between Geetika and Meera, Kashyap revealed.

“If we had set the film in India, we would have had to do some commentary on the queer relationship, which we wanted to stay away from,” she added. “We wanted the world to look at this relationship as very normalised relationship, which you don’t question. We had put two married women in the film, which you couldn’t do in India. Also, because of the accused being the woman, we don’t come across many such stories in India – not to say that they’re not there. There were many more such causes in the United Kingdom and the United States, which came out in our research. So we thought the story would be more palatable.”

Kashyap, Sensharma and Rannta also spoke about other aspects of the film during the video interview. The film is a risky take on the MeToo movement – precisely what attracted Kashyap to the script, she said.

Accused upends popular notions of how heroines should behave – a challenge that also worked its way into the portrayal of the characters, Sensharma and Rannta told Scroll. The film also makes important observations on the rush to judgement, especially at a time when social media dictates responses to allegations of sexual harassment, the actors added.

The full video is available below on Scroll’s YouTube channel.