“This character felt like a person, first and foremost. And then trans. I think that is what gives me that confidence to know that this is gonna work,” says Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju, a doctor turned actor and transgender woman. Gummaraju, 26, best known via her Instagram, @trintrin, where her posts centre around advocating for the LGBTQIA+ community, is making her acting debut in the highly-anticipated second season of Amazon Prime Video India’s Made in Heaven. She plays a wedding planner who heads production for the extravagant weddings requested by the show’s elite clientele. She is also the first transgender artist to play a recurring character in a mainstream OTT release.
Over the past few years, Indian entertainment media has tried to shine a light on the experiences of the LGBTQIA+ community, through films like Badhaai Do and Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui, albeit not always successfully or respectfully. “I do believe that as actors we should be able to play anything. The problem rises when…cis [gender] actors are being given the freedom and opportunity to play anything, but trans people don’t even get to play themselves,” says Gummaraju. “Portrayals may be good and they have been occasionally good in the past, but more often than not, they are inauthentic, and they can be cruel. And when that happens, you are perpetuating stereotypes and tropes about the community and continuing to add fuel to that fire of fear that people have, especially in Indian society, where very typically trans people are reduced to horror and comedy.”
Gummaraju was scouted for the role in December 2020, during her internship in the hospital, and around the time her social media presence was gaining traction. Despite having no formal experience or training in acting, she gave it a shot. Although she was assigned male at birth, Gummaraju said she always knew she was different. “I didn’t have the words to describe how so. As time went on, the possibility of doing anything in the performing arts, it just seemed bleak. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it in the way I wanted to. When I would look at actresses and admire the outfits and the grace and all of that, I was like okay, that’s not going to happen for me.”
But when she was flown out to Mumbai – her first trip to the city – for her audition, she found the team was open to feedback. “Zoya [Akhtar] in particular, was very open to feedback from the first time that we spoke. She was very open to saying, listen I don’t have the lived experience for this so if something feels off, please tell me. And there were moments where she incorporated a lot of that feedback into the script as well. And that’s so rare and so beautiful.”
Gummaraju was scouted for the role in December 2020, during her internship in the hospital, and around the time her social media presence was gaining traction
Made in Heaven’s first season, released in 2019, was a shocking exposé of the injustices that plague Indian society. The trailer for the second season seems to promise more of this–an exploration of how class, caste, abuse, infidelity, sexuality and identity politics play out behind closed doors. “Very little work is being done to show a mirror to society,” says Gummaraju. “This show is very different in the sense that it doesn’t shy away from that. It’s not scared of telling the truth as it is.”
Against the backdrop of the socio-political flux India is currently in, Gummaraju said that she realised “a lot of cis people, as actors, are able to separate themselves from the social responsibility of the work that they do. I don’t really have the privilege, in the sense that as someone who’s trans and who’s always been out there and vocal about queer and trans rights, any work that you do will tie back to your community and how your community is represented.”
She acknowledges that India’s trans community is extremely diverse, and this singular role cannot represent everyone. But she hopes that showing people the lived experience of being trans, through the show, will help normalise being a transgender person. “The fact that I’m a trans woman playing a trans woman, I don’t have to play the trans-ness of this character. I don’t have to add the shock value of being a man in a dress, because I’m not a man in a dress. Automatically, the whole notion of stereotyping gets removed because I’m just playing someone with human emotions and acting the human emotions of it, not the trans-ness of it.”
Gummaraju currently has 264k followers on Instagram, where she posts candid stories and selfies from everything from her struggles with gender dysmorphia and transphobia, mental health, and the pride she feels, when she looks at how far she’s come. She’s honest, funny and unabashedly herself. Even over an audio call, her energy was palpable.
Gummaraju in a custom outfit by trans designer Saisha Shinde for the trailer launch of ‘Made in Heaven’ Season 2
She says Gazal Dhaliwal, the screenwriter whose work includes Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga and Lipstick Under My Burkha, was one of the only people speaking about their experience as a transgender woman, while Gummaraju was growing up. “She showed up on Satyamev Jayate (the talk show hosted by Aamir Khan), and that, for me, was such a defining moment because just seeing her out there gave me the permission to be myself. We need so many more queer and trans people out there just telling their stories authentically.” She adds that, beyond queer people, their families also need to be exposed to these experiences. “They’re able to see [trans people] live their lives and be like, okay, if they can do it, so can my child.”
Her online presence inevitably attracts a lot of hate as well. “Sometimes it does make you wonder, why am I doing this? Is this sacrifice to my mental health really worth it? But when you have people reach out and tell you how much it’s helped in some way, it makes up for everything else.”
Made in Heaven’s second season premieres on August 10 on Amazon Prime Video.
COMMents
SHARE