Actor Tillotama Shome has opened up about playing an Assamese police officer in the web series Paatal Lok 2. Speaking with India Today, Tillotama shared why it was important to ensure that she did justice to her role as a Nagamese-speaking Assamese woman. Tillotama played Meghna Barua in Paatal Lok 2.
Tillotama said, “It was a source of worry for me that when you are a Bengali, you are representing a character who is Assamese, speaks Nagamese, you don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings because your representation made them feel like, ‘Gosh! Couldn’t they get an Assamese person to play this character’?”
She added, “Also, I was very aware that this might happen, and it pushed me to work harder. So that the representation feels humane, and it feels humane enough for people to overlook the mistakes I may have made, or not. I work very hard on that. That was very important for me because the Northeast is, anyway, misrepresented, under-represented, and I didn’t want to add that fuel to the fire by also not catching the language properly. So, it was very important for me.”