Actress Ushna Shah has come to the defense of Sharmin Segal, who faced criticism for her acting in the web series ‘Heeramandi’. Shah posted a tweet on X (formerly Twitter) writing, “Sharmin Segal underplayed Alamzeb but only slightly, which seems to be difficult to digest for an audience used to be a more dramatic style. The character would have been butchered had she over-played it, it would have become generic.”
“She mastered the Urdu dialect better than most Hindi speaking actors & the grain in her voice was spectacular,” Shah added.
Looking at British actor Jason Shah’s performance, who played Alastair Cartwright in the series, Ushna wrote, “The real tragedy is Cartwright not having an English accent; he was playing a British coloniser! Forget Received Pronunciation, he didn’t even bother forging a modern Brit accent? Even the English speaking Nawaabs should have had a trans-Atlantic-ish speak, similar to Jinnah, Gandhi, Nehru etc.” She added the hashtags ‘Heeramandi’ and ‘Sharmin Segal’.
Sharmin Segal is Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s niece.
The web series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, which co-stars Segal alongside Richa Chadha, Aditi Rao Hydari, Manisha Koirala, Sonakshi Sinha, and Sanjeeda Sheikh in major roles, as well as Farida Jalal, Fardeen Khan, Shekhar and Adhyayan Suman, and Taha Shah, is available on Netflix.
