Masaba Masaba spoilers follow.
Growing up in the loud, rambunctious, television-obsessed India of the '90s, it was hard to escape the chimera that Neena Gupta appeared to be. Households were talking about her, in whispers of either reverence or nosiness, as they snarfed down scene after scene. The scene-stealer was in everything. She had been in cinema once, older adults said. She had had a child out of wedlock. And she lived independently, that illusory signifier of a "strong woman".
At least 30 years later, post the turn of a new century, most of these things are still said about her – except with less political incorrectness, thanks to a new shot in the arm for Neena Gupta's movie and television career. But why do we premise an article that stars Neena's daughter and not her, on the latter? Because, like most things she's been in for decades, Gupta is still this yuppie Netflix India show's trump card.
That's not to say that 31-year-old fashion designer Masaba Gupta is not stellar in this herself. She is – as is her mother – at playing, er, themselves. For here's what's unique about Masaba Masaba – the OTT's Indian "original": it features two very real women and the very real people in their lives playing exaggerated, to the point of slightly hyperbolic, renditions of themselves.
What's real and what isn't about the Bollywood glitterati who swoosh in and out of the screen as real-to-reel participants in Masaba and Neena's life? You might not know. (A Keto-worshipping, starving Farah Ali Khan threatens a Katrina Kaif cutout with a beheading. Go figure). But what Netflix probably knew going into this is that enough of Neena and Masaba's lives are already out in the public domain – by their own choosing – for the viewer to take some, if not, most of their fictional lives at face value.
Therefore, you watch, in part-awe and part-commiseration as familiar snippets of the two women's lives – women who have fascinated households for decades – play out for laughs and tears.
For instance, Masaba's very real divorce is written into the show, as is her attempts to keep up the happy-couple farce in front of most of Bollywood. So is every one of her Instagram posts and stories about it – a part I will call overdone (there's only so much "Oslo"-filtered, pink- highlighted "story" updates of her morning coffees you can tolerate).
There is also, the trajectory of her fashion design career, some very real financial troubles – and a disastrous fashion show (eponymously called a "Hot Mess") that endears you to the fact that this 31-year-old woman who lives her public life in the public eye was okay with "documenting" catastrophic failures for a public show.
Most of all though, you wish there was more of Neena. In the mid to late '80s, Neena eventually raised her mixed-race daughter alone, in a conservative India, making waves for refusing to marry someone else for a "name". Neena's choice – that of raising a half-Black girl in a colour-obsessed country, "out of wedlock" – may have been touted as "strong", but it was a word, by her own admission, that proved to be her kryptonite.
During an interview with Rediff, Neena reminisced on this time, saying: "Oh, Neena Gupta is a strong woman… 'Strong woman' ensured I got vampish or single woman roles… I am an actress and I believe, without any false humility, that I am a good actress, so why does my 'strength' impinge on the kind of films I get?" the 62-year-old actress asked, wondering at the ease with which she lost her career.
It is a sore spot she touches upon and makes her own in Masaba Masaba – a show you understand she has commandeered to make her point: at one point, touchingly puzzled by the lack of auditions and callbacks for her, the sexagenarian actress pens a humble Instagram post advertising herself as "a good actor looking for good parts to play".
What's amazing about this Netflix moment is that it actually happened and can be traced back to a post Neena wrote on her Instagram three years ago, opening the floodgates to her re-reckoning in Bollywood. You root for the actress here, as you root almost consequentially for her daughter then, realising the import of bringing to life their (personal and professional) failures.
Masaba, on the other end of the spectrum, highlights an upper middle-class Indian millennial woman – who, notwithstanding her privileges – still faces censure for choices in her love/sex life. Despite that fact, she plays a version of herself trying online dating apps, renting a home alone (and struggling to find one without a man), booty-calling old flames and sleeping with men of her volition.
Masaba is confident in her "Caribbean body" – a physical trait she has struggled with, if past social media posts are anything to go by – not attempting to spandex away curves that she got from "my father…"
It is, you understand, a brave choice even for a Masaba Gupta: to play out/up her sex life for her predominantly Indian audience.
In the end, you may not know how much of Masaba Masaba is dramatised – and unless you were in the pair's inner sanctum, you would have no way of knowing – but you do know that these are onscreen renditions of Indian women, whether they're 31 or 62: living, loving epitomes of a hot mess.
Masaba Masaba is now available to watch on Netflix.
Netflix/Left Bank Pictures The Crown season 3 with Amazon exclusive box artwork
House of Cards - Season 6
Digital Spy has launched its first-ever digital magazine with exclusive features, interviews, and videos. Access this edition with a 1-month free trial, only on Apple News+.
Interested in Digital Spy's weekly newsletter? Sign up to get it sent straight to your inbox.
