Heeramandi actor Indresh Malik recently opened up about his thoughts on co-star Sharmin Segal's performance, who has been trolled since the series released, in an interview with The Free Press Journal. Sanjay Leela Bhansali's niece Sharmin played one of the pivotal characters of the series, Alamzeb and she has been slammed for her "expressionless" acting. Talking about working with Sharmin, Indresh Malik said, "I had a blast working with her and she's a wonderful soul. In between shots, we used to joke and, mark my words, she'll go places. There have been masterpieces in history that the masses have rejected." He added, "After 10-15 years, people realise it's a masterpiece. But when it was made and released, people rejected it outright there and then. So everybody has the right to criticise. You cannot stop anybody from commenting or criticising. So it's all about your state of mind."
FYI, Indresh Malik played the character of Ustadji in the series and he received applause for his performance. Before Indresh Malik, Heeramandi actors Jason Shah, Shekhar Suman, Adhyayan Suman also spoke about Sharmin being trolled. Contrary to what other actors said, Jason Shah felt the character "wasn't fully exlplored." Jason told Entertainment Live, "I thought, personally, there should have been a higher escalation of emotion in different places." He continued, "I remember Sanjay also saying, 'Stop acting from your head, act from your heart'. But I don't know, maybe that's what they wanted from her. Maybe that was the one tone that they were looking for from this character. But that's the director's call. She was alright. She was doing her thing. We worked pretty easily together. We never had any difficulty as such."
Earlier, casting director Shruti Mahajan also defended Sharmin's casting and talked about the audition process that Sharmin had to undergo before being finalised for the role of Alamzeb. Shruti told Hindustan Times, "She underwent the whole process just like other actors. The process for everyone was the same. They had to go through rounds of auditions, and look tests."
Meanwhile, Sharmin revealed that she auditioned for the role 16 times on The Great Indian Kapil Show. When Kapil inquired, "Kya unhone aapka sach me audition liya tha ya aapne unko mamu banaya?" (Did they truly audition you or did you just get the benefit of uncle-niece relationship?)," Sharmin replied that the process included 16 rounds of auditions. She said on the show, "Ek saal ke liye prepare kiya aur 16 baar auditions diye" (I prepared for a year and gave 16 auditions for the role)."