Heeramandi actor Jason Shah, who played the character Cartwright in the series, shared his thoughts on co-actor's Sharmin Segal's performance in an interview with Entertainment Live. Sharmin Segal, who played the character of Alamzeb in the series, has been trolled for her "expressionless" performance since the series released. Talking about the trolling Sharmin has been facing, Jason said, "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."
When asked if Sharmin was given specific instruction for a muted performance, Jason said, "Maybe, that's what I think. If not, if she wasn't told to keep it one-tone, I felt that the character had a lot of space and a lot of scope to do a lot of different things. I didn't feel it was fully explored. But I'm not the director."
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."
Sharmin, who appeared on The Great Indian Kapil Show along with the cast of series, revealed she auditioned for the role 16 times despite being Sanjay Leela Bhansali's niece. 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 audition. 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)."