Actor Sargun Mehta began her acting career with a television show titled 12/24 Karol Bagh in 2009. Over the next few years, she carved a niche for herself in the television industry and became a household name with shows such as Apno Ke Liye Geeta Ka Dharmayudh and Phulwa, among others. In 2015, she forayed into the Punjabi film industry and marked her film debut with Angreji. With films like Love Punjab (2016), Lahoriye (2017) and Qismat (2018), she became one of the most popular and sought-after names in Punjabi cinema.
But the one thing that fascinates Sargun about the Punjabi film industry is the lack of the paparazzi culture, which helps actors keep their private life away from the media glare. “There’s no paparazzi culture in Punjabi and I am very happy [about it] (laughs),” she states, adding, “I am somebody who never enjoys that as I believe I am never dressed appropriately. I am always in my tracksuit, literally lazing around when I am not shooting. I want people to know and talk about me in terms of my work and not how I walked out of my gym, the airport etc. If somebody clicks me, that’s fine but it never really excites me.”
With the boom in the regional film industries over the past few years, Sargun feels that Punjabi cinema also has the potential to go big but currently, it is taking time to recover its losses and become popular with good content. She elaborates, “Every industry takes time to evolve. Punjabi cinema was very popular once and then it completely shut down. There was a lull for about 10-12 years and it picked up again in the last 7-8 years. I guess it was the trust of the audience also and now, we are building it every day.”
She further adds, “We are making them feel that we’re doing good work just like other industries. You have to get the audience back. There was a time when people from Punjab wouldn’t watch Punjabi films. They preferred Hindi and even South languages too. We had to also move with time, get the quality up, and budget right for the audience to come back to trust us and watch our films.”
Last year, the 34-year-old made her Bollywood debut with the psychological thriller Cuttputlli (2022), where she played a cop. While her audience is looking forward to watching her do more Hindi films, Sargun maintains that she wants to take her own time in choosing scripts as she doesn’t intend on playing characters that adds no substance to a narrative.
Talking about it, she says, “Despite having a brief role, I had something to do in Cuttputlli which is why I did it. The film also had a shade people never saw me in. If you expect me to do a film where I have to just be good pretty and dance, I am bound to get bored and that will be reflected in my performance. No matter how big the platform is, I won’t do what doesn’t excite me. I won’t do something in which I won’t shine.”
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