Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju: ‘I Want To Play a Spy, a Cop... a Pregnant Woman'

What happens after a breakout role?

In 2023, Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju broke out as Meher in Made in Heaven season 2, one of the first trans characters in Indian streaming to be written with dignity, grace, and agency. Then came Rainbow Rishta, a tender docu-series about queer love. But then came a hiatus of sorts.

For an actor with Gummaraju’s visibility, an Instagram-savvy former doctor with a growing fanbase, one would assume a clear path ahead. But as she tells The Hollywood Reporter India, that isn’t always how it goes. “I’ve been auditioning,” she says candidly.

Now, with Kankhajura, she returns in a role unlike anything she’s done before. She plays Aimee, a Goan bakery owner who wears her softness like armour, caught between an abusive relationship and a desperate man’s manipulations. Gummaraju speaks with insight and vulnerability about building Aimee from the inside out, the emotional labour of being a “first,” and why she’s hungry for more than just trans roles.

A still from 'Kankhajura'

Edited excerpts: 

THR: I want to know, when you're building a character like Aimee, where do you usually start? Do you start with the emotional core, the body language, the dialect? Because I feel like you're doing something different here. Or is it more instinctive? 

Trinetra: I think where I started first was just with the script and the text. That is always primary. Chandan [Arora] sir did a fablous job of adapting the show Magpie. The script is always a sort of holy grail. Thankfully, it has been for whatever parts I've played thus far. There was so much happening with each of the characters’ arcs, and I think that itself was such a rich resource.

The second thing was reaching out to someone that knows more than I do. That’s always important to me. If you're in a room and you feel like you're the smartest person there, you're in the wrong room. That’s always how I’ve felt. Which is why I reached out to Puja Sarup, who coached me through Made in Heaven saying, "I'd like to do a workshop with you and build and find this character." Because for me, it's important that I find just a few things that I have in common with the character I'm doing while there’s also enough that's different to excite me.

Aimee is not just physically and visually very different, but also emotionally a very different person from who I am. She has a very interesting arc. She's someone who's putting up with fairly abusive behaviour from her partner, physically, emotionally abusive and violent, while also being manipulated by Ashu, the protagonist of the show.

These are spaces that we don’t explore with trans actors or even in cinema, for that matter. Something as sensitive as intimate partner violence is not something we see trans people undergo onscreen. We’re often reduced to comic caricatures or stereotypes.

It was exciting for me to see Aimee have those layers, and Puja helped me create those layers. 

That was important to step into a space of internal safety, even in scenes that required violence or vulnerability. The fact that I was surrounded by a director and co-actors and a team that created that sense of safety was very important, too.

We did have a dialect coach on set, for whatever little Konkani we speak. It's mostly Hindi, but there’s Konkani twang, and that’s something all of us worked on. We travelled around Goa. We spent time there. I'm in Goa all the time anyway, my Instagram feed is half Goa (laughs).

Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju

THR: What’s very interesting to me is that there are all these layers to Aimee’s character. She is navigating a lot of conflict, and regular relationship troubles in a very universal way. Do you see this as a step toward portraying a normalised trans experience in mainstream storytelling, where everything doesn’t have to look or feel “different”? Or is this, in a way, “hetero-washing”?

Trinetra: I think something we see very often with trans characters is either “poverty porn” or this kind of trauma porn around what we go through as individuals. While it’s important for me to reflect the reality of violence and othering and difficulty, I also think it’s important to portray what normalcy looks like in our lives.

Because frankly, regardless of our social location, we’re all human beings. We have love, desire, friendship, loss and these are universal human experiences.

So yes, one can interpret a relationship however they want. But for me personally, I found it joyous to find those little moments of innocence in an otherwise dark script and world. I think Ashu and Aimee’s equation is actually the one part of the show that doesn’t feel as heavy. That was very nice for me. They bond over food, which was great because I was eating a lot of Goan food through the whole thing.

Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju

THR: Do you think actors from marginalised communities across the board are still expected to “represent,” rather than simply perform? And does that ever get in the way of the craft? 

Trinetra: It does. It unfortunately does. When you belong to a community that is so marginalised — we have one of the lowest literacy rates in the country. If you look at the statistics of all marginalised communities in India, trans people are possibly the most marginalised when it comes to healthcare, literacy, education, employment.

When one or a few of us break into spaces where there are none of us — be it medicine or entertainment — then the responsibility to represent becomes very automatic. It becomes something that everyone, whether from the community or otherwise, starts to expect of you.

At a very young age, I felt like I had to become an activist, in some capacity, without ever actually wanting or aspiring to that. And I don’t complain. I really enjoy the responsibility to represent. It gives me a deep sense of purpose and fulfilment, even on the darkest days in this city and industry. Creating that representation is what saved my life and having that purpose pulls me through.

However, there are days where it does weigh you down because there are certain parts you perhaps say no to, or can’t do, because there is a greater social responsibility. But I’m also very grateful that I have the privilege of saying no to things. Because trans people who came before me — say, Bobby Darling — had to unfortunately become the caricature that filmmakers wanted. Because what other choice was there? What other way to survive?

For me, I find myself in a position of great privilege to even play parts with this degree of nuance and depth. Things that excite me. Things that go beyond what cis-het people laugh at or punch down at. 

It’s both a burden, but also one of my greatest joys.

Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju

THR: Last year, Hunter Schafer said she no longer wants to play transgender roles after Euphoria. She said, “I just want to be a girl and finally move on.” Where do you stand on that sentiment? Do you want to consciously play trans characters in order to represent, or are you hoping to move beyond that?

Trinetra: I feel like American entertainment is in a very different place. They had their wave of representation long before us. Ours is very scattered and it’s hardly a movement in the way it has been in the States.

I admire Hunter Schafer. I look up to her in so many ways. I loved her part in Euphoria. But I’m able to separate my personal and professional life in that capacity.

In my personal life, for most practical purposes, I live very comfortably as a woman. It’s been seven to eight years into my transition, and I’ve settled into my new skin. I find a lot of comfort in my womanhood. It’s been a while since my transition felt complete.

But professionally, I’m very happy to play characters with layers whether they’re trans or not. It doesn’t matter to me what the gender of my character is. As long as it’s a good part, I’d be happy to play it. At some point, should the universe offer it, I want to play a pregnant woman.

I did this amazing workshop with Helena Walsh, a fantastic acting coach. I told her, “I don’t want to be boxed in.” She gave me a scene: a pregnant woman telling her sister she’s pregnant, and the sister has recently lost a child in an accident. It was such a loaded, delicious scene to play! Even if I may never access that biological reality in real life.

I want to do it all. I want to play a spy. I want to play a cop. Whatever this world can and hopefully will offer. I definitely don’t want to box myself by gender.

Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju

THR: You said that in an interview that you’d be happy to play a cis character, too. Have those offers come? Or is the reservation more on the part of the industry?

Trinetra: It is. It absolutely is. It requires a certain amount of awareness, openness, and enthusiasm from a filmmaker to imagine a trans actor simply being an actor. Just playing a character without a gender label. There has been reservation and hesitation.

But I’ve recently started testing and auditioning for cis parts, which I find great joy in. There are casting directors, like Panchami Ghavri, who’ve done that for me. It was exciting for me to test for that part. 

I don’t know whether it’ll work out. It may not. But it shows me that casting directors and filmmakers are opening up to the idea.

If we can do a Kankhajura where Aimee is so much more than her trans-ness, then I think the cis character is not that far away.