Brown is a crime thriller in capital letters. In a Kolkata so yellow as to be soaked in formaldehyde, a woman's torso hangs suspended in mid-air, her wrists and ankles tied to bedposts, her head lobbed off in an imitation of human sacrifice. Into this altar of death enters a cop named Rita Brown, pauses, surveys the room, and barely blinks. Her skin is pale as parchment, her eyes weary and haunted. She rolls her own cigarettes. Official reports have her as 'emotionally unstable'. There are murmurs of a drinking problem — honestly, the least of her worries.
This is not the Karisma Kapoor we remember from the buoyant, vivid 90s. It's not even the Kapoor of Fiza, Zubeidaa or Shakti: The Power. After stepping away from the screen for several years, Kapoor made her streaming world debut in Mentalhood (2020), a dysfunctional family comedy. She followed it up with the glossy Netflix ensemble film Murder Mubarak (2024).
It is Brown, though, that is best described as a Kapoor vehicle for the smartphone age: a grim and gnarly murder mystery with a harboiled protagonist, set in a Kaahani-esque world and populated with actors like Jisshu Sengupta, Kharaj Mukherjee and Sandip Chakraborty. Directed by Abhinay Deo (Delhi Belly) and adapted from Abheek Barau's mystery novel City of Death, the series was shot over sixty days in Kolkata in 2022 (in a nicely prescient touch, the fictional Chief Minister of the state is a male).
Kapoor, it transpires, had intially turned down the project. "I was at Mehboob Studios shooting an ad when the team from Zee Studios came to meet me," she recalls. "I told them I appreciated it, but I wasn't going to do it. It was a lengthy production away from home and I wasn't feeling ready for it." The makers, not to be turned away, requested for half an hour of her time. "Once I heard the character, I thought, okay, I need to drop everything and do this."
In a conversation with THR India, Kapoor discussed sinking her teeth into Brown, her vast and bewildering filmography ranging comedies and thrillers, the primacy of family, and Bollywood's evolution in the last three decades...
The name Rita Brown has a nice literary ring. There’s Father Brown in the famous G.K. Chesterton novels and BBC series. What do you make of the name when they pitched it to you?
I never thought of that connection! I love Father Brown and really enjoy watching the TV series. Rita Brown comes from the Anglo-Indian community in Kolkata. Not many people may know there's a big Anglo-Indian community in the city. In the original book, the character is called Sohini Sen. So the writers have tweaked it around to make the background fit. I find ‘Rita Brown’ to be an endearing name for a detective.
Moreover, this wasn't a typical cop backstory of just past trauma or any usual arc. This was beyond that. This is a woman is who is broken. She's an alcoholic and a smoker. I don't smoke, I don't drink. She’s completely opposite to Karisma Kapoor. Everything about her was the opposite of me. And she was so bare, so raw.
Was this the first time you ever filmed in Kolkata?
Yes, that is true. I love Kolkata and I have been there on multiple occasions, but never to shoot a film or a show. We we shot everywhere possible, from Bow Barracks to Kumartuli to Chinatown. Kolkata is a character in Brown; and it's not the Kolkata we've seen on screen until now. That was also very intriguing and a lot of fun to explore.
Did you see this series as the natural next step after Mentalhood and Murder Mubakar?
Well I did Murder Mubarak that just for Homi (Adajania), honestly. I literally shot for 10 days. He's an old school friend, he was a few grades senior to me, and we knew each other from our Breach Candy Club days. I know him very well. He called and said it's an eccentric character, please do it. So I did.
Again, I've been lucky enough to have done some great work with some amazing makers in Indian film history. But I think Brown is a step above in a different way, because I don't think there's been such a raw character. It's not only that I did not wear makeup for the role. It's about being this woman who's so burdened and trying to just get by. She's then called back into the police force to take on a case, but she’s reluctant. She loves the job but she’s trying to cope with it. Her father was a cop too. So she has that responsibility of carrying that image as well. All these layers were very fascinating for me.
You’ve done some wild thrillers in your time. I remember as a kid being scarred by Baaz: A Bird in Danger, and never being able to guess Suniel Shetty was the killer.
Ha! It's been years since someone has reminded me of that film. I think we shot that in Nainital. And I remember there were scenes in a creepy house with a lot of birds. That was actually someone's real home in Nainital. But honestly, I don't remember a lot of those films very well. In fact, I have not watched any of my films. As actors — and I think it's the same for my sister Kareena — we cannot sit back and enjoy ourselves on screen because we're so critical of ourselves. It is actually a good thing to be critical of yourself. Even during the trials for Raja Hindustani (1996), everyone would say, come sit and watch, and I'd be there critiquing myself thinking I could have done this better, or that differently. It's just how I'm wired. Honestly, the audience should love the movie and love you, that's the most important thing and that’s what makes me happy.
The industry today is far more formalised and corporatised, with bound scripts, lawyers, agreements, agencies. Do you see that as necessarily a good thing, or has something organic about making movies been lost?
In a way, it's really good that things are streamlined. Back then we worked on gut instinct, passion, and belief. There are so many films I've done that had no script or written scenes. You would go to the set and it would all get developed on set within minutes. These are big, hit films I am talking about. A director like David Dhawan would just tell me, in Hindi, "Faad do" (kill it) and I'd understand exactly what he wanted. A lot of scenes in Haseena Maan Jaayegi, for instance, were entirely improvised. We were like a crew or a gang—Chi Chi (Govinda), Paresh ji, Kader bhai, Shakti ji. We'd be working together on a different film every day. So there was a great comic synergy between us, almost like a theatre troupe.
But it must have also been punishing to work non-stop like that...
There are times where I've done four shifts a day; three shifts in Bombay and one in Hyderabad at night. So I’ve grown up in this industry, I’ve been working since I was 16 or 17 years old. It's been about taking each step at a time and learning while climbing the ladder. I think it's a learning process even today, and I've never taken myself too seriously. Today, I am quite clear about the balance I need between work and family, and I believe in it deeply.
You and Kareena have had long careers each, with a lifetime of experience to share. What is the relationship like at this stage in your lives?
It's the same as it always was. Family is the most important thing for us, family time is the most essential thing for us. I'm my sister's biggest cheerleader, and I think it goes both ways. That unconditional love and support has always been there and always will be.
Brown will release on ZEE5 on June 5.