Bhumi Pednekar: I find solace in the fact that my art is not apolitical

Bhumi Pednekar plays a disturbed cop, Rita Ferreira in Prime Video’s recently released web-series, Daldal. There is a string of unease in her personality; she hides a dark past behind her stoic demeanour. The show’s title reveals a part of her mind, which is as murky as the serial killing case that she takes up. The denseness and three-dimensionality of Rita have a novelistic scope. The show has been inspired by Vish Dhamija’s crime-thriller book, Bhendi Bazaar. Bhumi, who embodies Rita’s heaviness with rigour, says that the seires takes a departure from how cops are portrayed in popular culture.

Bhumi Pednekar in ‘Daldal’
| Photo Credit:
Prime Video

“We have always seen the police force being glamorised. Daldal is far from that. It is more twisted and dark. What really attracted me to the show was how complex Rita is. She is a cop, but has every instinct to be on the other side. The writing has humanised her,” says Bhumi.

The actor grew up reading a lot of crime fiction. “When I was a young adult, the craze of Harry Potter books had started. Additionally, I used to also read a lot of rom-coms. There was a phase when I was into the Nancy Drew series. All of those books shaped a lot of my childhood,” says Bhumi. However, she stopped reading fiction in her later years, when she was mostly reading film scripts, watching shows, and consuming content from different means. The actor also recounts how being on the phone impacted her attention span.

“I was so used to snacky content that even reading film scripts became difficult. I had grown so impatient that I would not be able to go through even a thirty-second reel. The doom-scrolling habit scarred me deeply,” she says. However, Bhumi has become more mindful recently as she has returned to reading. “Right now I am in my Erotica era,” she says with a laugh and then explains, “It is good literature.”

That struggle has been similar for Suresh Triveni, who serves as the writer and creator of Daldal. Suresh has brought many books with the aim of reading them one day. “It is important to read more now as our life experiences are depleting, and acquiring newer experiences from books is needed,” he says.

The book, Bhendi Bazaar, was the starting point for Daldal. However, the show unfolds differently from the bestselling novel, taking key elements and characters while etching a distinct narrative. “Once you start adapting a book to screen, you take those liberties,” says Suresh. “Some narrative decisions are taken considering the 40-minute episode length, putting a cliffhanger at the end, and having a strong opening. Changes are bound to happen due to the different structures of these mediums.”

A still from the show
| Photo Credit:
Prime Video

Daldal also releases at a time when crime thrillers have populated the streaming space. A host of names come to mind, including Paatal Lok, Delhi Crime, Dahaad, Kohrra, Aranyak, and more. The genre beats have become extremely familiar. In this context, Suresh says that the “biggest risk” is not hitting a repetitive turn.

“By the time you are writing, something else comes out before, and everything you wrote suddenly seems doubtful,” Suresh says, adding that they started working on the show in 2020. “It took time purely to eliminate the tropes. You also need certain tenets of the genre for it to work. So, we focused more on the characters,” he explains.

More of a ‘whydunit’ than a mystery about the killer’s identity, Daldal often also feels like a character study of Rita. In a way, the show is an extension of Bhumi’s filmography, where she has starred in gritty crime dramas with strong characters, such as Sonchiriya and Bhakshak, as well as politically charged films such as Afwaah and Bheed, both of which address the changing realities of today. The actor says that she chooses to be part of these stories as she resonates with them on an emotional and moral level.

“I really feel that these stories need to be told, especially because there is some social commentary involved,” she says. For Bhumi, it is important to align with the film’s message. “In today’s times, when all of us have become apolitical and want to stay away from conflict, I find a lot of solace in the fact that my art doesn’t conform to that ideology. It gives me a little more courage to let the world know where I stand in the spectrum,” she signs off.

Daldal is currently streaming on Prime Video

Published – February 02, 2026 05:23 pm IST