Sonali Bendre Opens up about the emotional weight of playing Mona in Prime Video’s crime thriller ‘Rakh’. The actor said the character’s quiet sadness and limited dialogue made the role deeply visceral. Although he found working without long scenes of dialogue easier than expected, leaving the character behind after a day on set proved much more difficult. Bendre said the intensity of Mona’s journey sometimes followed her home during the shoot.Bendre spoke to IANS after the release of ‘Rakh’, which is now streaming on Prime Video. The series is a fictional investigative thriller set in the late 1970s and takes inspiration from the Ranga-Billa case involving the abduction and murder of siblings Geeta and Sanjay Chopra in Delhi.
Sonali Bendre as Mona in ‘Rakh’
Bendre said the writing and preparation behind the series gave her a strong foundation before she started acting. “More than 50%, I would say, is already done,” he said, crediting the material the team provided.Mona has relatively few spoken lines in the series. Bendre says this aspect has worked in his favour. “Not having dialogue was the easy part for me,” he says, adding that he doesn’t find memorizing pages of dialogue as easy as earlier in his career.The actor explained that silence brought a different challenge. With fewer lines, he had to convey Mona’s pain through expressions, pauses and emotional restraint. This process required him to hold the character’s state of mind longer.Bendre said the role became more real because it had to be internalized. When the camera turns off, he describes the difficulty of separating himself from Mona.
‘Rakh’ cast and crime thriller story
“It’s more visceral and it makes it more real,” Bendre said when discussing her vision for the role. He admitted that he struggled to put the character aside at the end of the day.“It was a character I struggled to leave on set,” he said. “I would sometimes take it home and it was scary for me.”‘Rakh’ follows an investigation that sets off a nationwide search and explores the clash between crime and justice. The show uses a fictional format while drawing from a case that rocked Delhi in the late 1970s.The series stars Ali Fazal, Sonali Bendre, Aamir Bashir, Akash Makhija and Ramandeep Yadav. Prasit Roy directed and executive produced the show. Bendra’s comments underscore how Mona’s restrained presence shaped her performance in ‘Rakh’, where emotion often comes through silence rather than speech.
