Cosmo cover star Triptii Dimri on being unapologetically herself

The morning sun in Mumbai hits different today. It does feel like the most ideal time to be here, thanks to the little nip in the air I may have carried with me from Delhi, along with the sketchy AQI. The Gateway of India standing tall and statuesque overlooking the Arabian Sea is giving portal energy—the kind which harbours latent dreams of being crowned superstar by millions that make their way here. After 10 minutes of being lost in the sea of movement and port play, I am told my cover star has arrived. I turn around to see Triptii Dimri walking towards me, self-assured, pods on, ready to make my Monday less manic and quite marvellous.

Twenty minutes later, when we reach Alibag, Triptii stops by a local corner shop filling her tote with chips, chocolates, and Alpenliebe Gold caramel toffees she is delighted to see. Childlike, beautiful, playful, a quiet observer, she’s unaffected by people turning around to stop and stare while she radiates zillennial rizz—that particularly charming variety which is self-assured, living in the moment, yet mindful. Fortuitously, our shoot location is perched atop a hill, far from the madding crowd.

Over my very relaxed interview call a few days before the shoot, when aurora borealis had magically appeared on her gram, I had asked her about how important being a constant traveller was. She acknowledged it was paramount, and some quietude after intense work daze is what she really craved for. “I think last year was quite hectic for me, and while I have no complaints, I feel like when you are continuously working, you need to also mentally disconnect. You want that time to yourself to ask the right questions, you know... I like to hide from people and sit in a café on holidays, get my coffee, and read a book. That’s really all I want. I went to this very remote village in France, which had like 10 people. It was the most beautiful trip of my life, and I plan to go there every now and then since I felt such positivity there—that’s how I want to feel most of the time.”

Fair ask from a world which is a complex multiverse of highs and lows. Simpler and accessible for someone who is deeply self-aware.

If 2023 was a breakthrough year for Triptii, as far as mainstream success (especially after Animal) goes, 2024 was a full-circle moment—her 2018 film, Laila Majnu (directed by Sajid Ali) was re-released and performed exceptionally well.

“When the film was released, we were all very disappointed. There were hardly any people in the theatre, and I remember one of my friends made fun of me. We had gone to watch Uri (2019), and by the end of the film, everybody stood up and gave a standing ovation. The theatre was fully packed and all of us were clapping. She looked at me and said, “This is called a film!” Last year, all of us (the cast and crew of Laila Majnu) were sitting on the stairs while watching the film, teary-eyed and happy that we’d finally made it,” Triptii recalls.

As a middle child, even though she vied for attention, Triptii learnt to enjoy her time alone and started to consider it a blessing. Seemingly shy, aloof, underconfident, and a homebody, few would believe that her first tryst with acting was when she was about 10 years old. She tells me, “My dad was part of the organising committee for Ramlila (a dramatic re-enactment of the life of Ram—a Hindu God and king) in the colony I grew up in Delhi, for a good 30 years. As a kid, he had played all kinds of characters—from Ram to Ravan, and one month before Dussehra (a Hindu festival), everyone would start prepping. I don’t know why it was only the boys who were encouraged to participate, and girls were given smaller roles like Sita’s friend. I have played the witch when Sita is kidnapped. My brother, on the other hand, has played every character from Ram, Lakshman, Sita...like almost everyone, even though I always wanted to play Sita. Still, when I would get all nervous and forget my lines, my dad would stand behind the curtain and help me with my dialogues. Even back then, I never thought of acting as a career choice. It was only when one of my relatives had come visiting and suggested that I try modelling, that the comment stayed with me.”

Was it easy convincing her parents who had no idea about how the film industry worked that this is what she wanted to do?

She quips, “I am good at lying.” I am taken aback by her honesty, but she furnishes the deets for full disclosure. “I have always been very stubborn. If you tell me this is something I am not supposed to do, I will definitely want to do that. While I was studying literature, one day my brother’s friend, who had bought a DSLR, shot some pictures of me and randomly sent it to an agency. The agency liked my pictures and called me for an audition. While I hid those shoots from my parents initially, when they started seeing my pictures in magazines and newspapers, they were happy. Soon after, a company making YouTube videos got in touch. I started working with them, but soon realised I was really horrible and just didn’t know how to act. The positive side of it was that I was getting comfortable in front of the camera, and suddenly started getting noticed by people from Bombay (Mumbai). I researched online, sent my folio, auditioned for a number of TVCs, and got a call for a Santoor advertisement. It’s then that I decided to tell my parents that I’ll have to go to Bombay, since we were no longer talking about going to Lajpat Nagar. When I finally landed, I felt pure joy! I remember it was monsoons, and even today, every time monsoons hit, it takes me back to my initial days—Jan 16, 2016! When I was in Delhi before the shift, I had sent in an audition for Poster Boys (2017). When it was time to go back after the ad shoot, I got a call from the casting director asking me to come down, so I stayed back and went in for a second round of auditions. The next day, I was called by Shreyas Talpade, who had liked what I did. When I told my parents that I am doing a film with Sunny Deol and Bobby Deol, they didn’t ask me any questions.”

Call it divine synchronicity, but things were beginning to fall into place unexpectedly. It’s around the same time that the Delhi agency Triptii was attached to informed her they were opening an office in Bombay, and that she could live in the company apartment if she wanted to. In 2017, Triptii moved to maximum city, giving herself a year to gauge how the move would benefit her. By February, she auditioned for Laila Majnu, and even though she had gotten rejected earlier, as fate would have it, she ended up accompanying a friend who wanted to go for it. With no intention of queuing up for another round, while waiting, one of the costume directors spotted her and insisted she give the audition again. The next day, she got a call to come in. This seemed like enough of a sign to go after it.

Simple enough? Not really.

She recounts, “Mukesh sir called me and asked me why I had not told him that I had done Poster Boys. I told him, ‘No one asked me’. He went on to brief me that they needed a fresh face. I walked back home from Andheri to Juhu beach, bought myself coconut water, and was devastated by the news. It was my birthday that day. It was really heartbreaking, but I told myself it’s okay, I have to move on. Two weeks later, I got a call saying that it’s happening.”

Personally, the movie that affected me most, thanks to the sheer brilliance of Triptii’s acting prowess, was Bulbbul (2020), which had an OTT debut during the pandemic. I had not seen Laila Majnu or Poster Boys, but Anvita Dutt’s character sketch of Bulbbul [the protagonist] was layered and endearing, with Triptii effortlessly getting under the skin of the character. And then came Qala (2022), which was once again captivating for its exceptional storytelling and Triptii’s portrayal of a talented singer who was haunted by her past and her mother’s disdain despite her success.

How does she become a person she had never heard of or known? Triptii wholeheartedly credits her director. “Every day, for two months, while working on Qala, Anvita kept talking about the character’s inner world. What did she sound like? What was she feeling? What did she do sitting alone in the bedroom? Similar to Bulbbul, where I was told to forget about the script for some time and imagine what she was like when she was five years old. What kind of experiences did she have? All this made it easier to connect with the character,” says Triptii.

Unafraid to experiment, one day she could be focused on mainstream Bollywood while on another day, a cool, intense, independent film. Her watchlist of favourites remains as diverse as her range: Killing Eve, Miracle in Cell No. 7, and Kill Bill.

Currently working on Vishal Bhardwaj’s next, opposite Shahid Kapoor, she seems to be in her blessed era: Composed and far more centred than she has ever been.

Maybe because she is no longer pretending to be anyone other than herself. She explains, “I try to be as honest as possible. When you are not a good student, bullied at school, not the teacher’s favourite, and don’t get the attention you want, it impacts your confidence. Plus, when you don’t know what to do, especially at gatherings where I didn’t want to be at the start of my career, I was pretending, even with friends...thinking maybe that will help make me feel confident and comfortable. But then, I reached a point where I was like I’ll do what I want to do and be who I am. In your 20s, things are rapidly changing, with people moving in and out of your life, and I feel like you find your voice. I think I have. While I still find myself confused sometimes—I find that the lack of self-love was making me feel that way— there’s a new kind of confidence that has come about by being self-aware.”

She adds, “I struggle with confidence a lot. Every time I have to go for a show, or on stage, I go crazy, and my first instinct is to avoid it. But then, I tell myself, whatever happens, I will go, I’ll show my face. The only way out is through. I used to be scared of the camera, but now I am so comfortable with it. I think I have reached that stage where I am comfortable around people. Even if I was dying on stage, you won’t be able to tell that I am nervous.”

Growing up in Delhi, with summer vacations spent in Nag and Naugaon (her ancestral villages in Uttarakhand), it’s clear she holds her pahaadi (girl from the mountains) heritage close to her heart, which also perhaps makes it easier to return to the roots, unaffected by her continued success as an actor.

She takes me back to the time she would go to her grandparent’s home—small, peaceful, untouched— surrounded by hills...where the air is always fresh, and strong bonds were made with cousins over stealing grapes and mangoes from someone’s farm when she was younger. “We would be out playing all day, from six in the morning to 11 at night. I would play with the village kids, drink water straight from the stream, and watch my mother clean the house with geeli mitti (wet mud). I remember I would sit around and just take in the earthy smell, which is like when you mix wood and rain together, and sometimes, I would eat that too. You don’t need alarms because you wake up to the sound of the birds. Being pahaadi is about simplicity and being close to nature. It’s something that keeps you grounded even when life gets overwhelming, or when you feel like an outsider in a big city. You still carry that rawness with you, which is really special.”

Unfettered by chaos, could her love for cinema and life stem from her love for love? The silent force that knows no method or technique. Kind of raw, kind of unfiltered.

You see, while going through her gram pre-interview, her bio stood out... ‘Love is the way’... I probe her, why does she feel this way?

Triptii explains, “I feel with love you can do anything. There is so much love in the world, and there is so much love inside of us, which we forget to tap into. I think this is also something that I found in the lockdown when I was also reading a lot. Around the same time is when I came across this podcast from Sister BK Shivani. I see her videos and it just makes so much sense when she says that there is love inside all of us. We just choose to tap into other emotions and let them take over. If someone is fighting with you and if you talk to that person with love, things will change...I have seen it change. I have experimented with it, so I really feel that love is the way. With love, you can achieve anything, you can conquer anything...and if you can’t, just be with it, hold on to that feeling. It is the greatest feeling of all.”

It sure is.

Editor and interview: Pratishtha Dobhal
Digital editor: Sonal Ved
Photographer: Taras Taraporvala
Stylist: Chandini Whabi
Cover design: Mandeep Singh
Editorial coordinator: Shalini Kanojia
Make-up artist: Nikita Kapoor
Hair artist: Sourav Roy
Fashion assistants: Kareena Desai, Elsie Chetry, and Sana Anver
Fashion intern: Akshita Shettigar
Location courtesy: Ty Bhojwani, The Ray, Alibaug
Artist reputation management: Communique PR

On Triptii: Outfit, Kristina Fidelskaya; earrings, Simran Chhabra Jewels.

Also read: My seven minutes with Lily Collins

Also read: Beyond the spotlight: Getting to know the real Gurfateh Singh Pirzada