Actress Deepshikha Nagpal recently sat down for an emotional tell-all on SCREEN’s Dear Me… Season 2. While the actress shared heartwarming memories of working with superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Koyla and Baadshah, she also opened up about the emotional toll of being typecast in negative roles. Deepshikha, who has portrayed various antagonistic characters on both television and in films, revealed she was psychologically impacted by harsh comments and judgment—especially from her own family.
Talking about the downside of playing negative characters, Deepshikha said, “After Baadshah, I was offered only negative roles. I didn’t want to do those because people started judging me. Back then, negative roles weren’t respected. ‘Yeh toh side actress hai, bure kaam karti hai’ (She’s a side actress, does bad things). You don’t want to hear that when you’re living in this society.”
Deepshikha also opened up about playing negative roles on TV. She said, “On TV, I also played negative roles because of typecast. Koyla was negative, even though Bindya was not negative; she was in love with SRK and saved Madhuri, but because she worked with Amrish Puri, she was negative. In Baadshah, just because I was with the villain, I was negative. TV also started offering such roles then, to perform negative roles are brilliant, you have full freedom. But I used to hate it because people were judging me. I would only keep explaining my choices to people.”
‘I was told your kids won’t respect you’
Deepshikha recalled how criticism for her negative roles deeply affected her personal life. “My parents had passed away, so there was no one to guide me. My relatives judged me constantly. During the lockdown, I reflected on my career—I had done such big films, but when I came home from shoots, no one appreciated my work. Instead, I was told, ‘What have you done? Tumne toh kapde utaare iss film mein… Tum toh aise ho, tumhare bacche tumko respect nahi karenge.’ I felt ashamed. I started questioning why I ever did Koyla or Baadshah. I developed so many complexes that I stopped telling anyone what I was working on.”
“My daughter used to break Koyla CDs. All of it made me go silent—it affected me psychologically. I felt like a failure—as an actor, in my marriage, everywhere. I was broken inside. I eventually learned that there’s no market for your sorrow, so I never carried that baggage to work. Acting became my escape. It helped me heal,” she added.
‘Even if anyone came to drop off at home, there was judgment…’
Recalling a moment, she decided to break through her suppression. Deepshikha shared, “My father was very strict, so I had no boyfriends, I was that typical good girl. But any wrong picture in a magazine, a sensational headline, or even if anyone came to drop me home, there was judgment, and I would only cry. Even if I went for a meeting and the door was shut, I would get very anxious, I would think what people would be thinking outside. But let me tell you, nobody in the industry ever made a bad comment on me. When I would come out, people would weirdly stare at me, thinking what I had done inside. It would just choke me.”
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“One day I was shooting for Barsaat Ki Raat in Manali, and I learned that a big actor was talking shit about me. He said that we had met for dinner, and I got very angry. I went and yelled at him when I confronted him, and he got so scared. That day Deepshikha changed, since that day I started screaming. Thank god that happened, because if you get suppressed, people will keep pushing you down,” Deepshika added.
