I Did Not Hold Back Says Shruti Sharma On Playing Sonal Mishra In Gangs Of Gorakhpur

Shruti Sharma is stepping into a completely different zone with Gangs of Gorakhpur. The actress plays Sonal Mishra, a bold, feisty and headstrong woman whose love for Raghav Chaturvedi, played by Namish Taneja, becomes the driving force behind many of her choices. For Shruti, the role offered a chance to break away from the characters she has played previously and bring out a side of herself audiences have rarely seen.

Describing Sonal, Shruti said, “She is a very bold, feisty, and headstrong girl—a type of character I’ve never played before.” Sonal, according to the actress, is “literally blinded by love for Raghav.” He remains her absolute priority, even ahead of her own family. Yet Sonal is not someone who blindly follows him without question. She challenges Raghav when she believes he is choosing the wrong path, but she refuses to abandon him. “She holds onto Raghav until the very end,” Shruti explained, adding that even when Sonal stands up to him, she does so with the determination to bring him back.

That emotional stubbornness is what makes Sonal particularly interesting. Shruti believes a more sensible person might have walked away from Raghavs increasingly dangerous world, but Sonal simply does not think that way. “I am going to bring you back from this,” is essentially the mindset that defines her character. It is a personality far removed from Shrutis own, which made the role even more exciting for the actress.

“I feel like I’ve been waiting a long time to play such a powerhouse character,” Shruti admitted. She recalled her earlier roles, including Dhanak in Gathbandhan, where she played an IPS officer, as well as other intense characters who dealt with difficult family situations. She also played Kritika in Mitti, another police officer. Sonal, however, gave her the freedom to approach a character without worrying about maintaining the restrained image associated with some of her earlier performances.

“This was one where I decided I didn't care about the rest of the world; I was going to perform with total abandon,” Shruti said. For her, the character represents an opportunity to show audiences an entirely new version of herself. “This role means a lot to me because I’m able to present a completely new version of myself to the world,” she added.

Shrutis preparation began with something surprisingly simple: reading. She explained that she first reads the story as an audience member before approaching it as an actor. “When you read a story from an audience's perspective, you grasp so many more things,” she said. After that, she reads it two or three more times as an actor to understand the mindset of every character, along with the nuances, depth and demands of the role.

For Sonal, Shruti also drew from a more personal side of her personality. She said a particular version of herself emerges whenever she visits Lucknow and spends time with her brothers. As the eldest sister, she becomes much more open and even “quite dominating,” she admitted with a laugh. That part of her personality became useful while building Sonals confidence and assertiveness.

The actress gave herself another simple instruction: stop overthinking. “Okay, you’re an introvert, but if you get a chance to be completely free, what would you do?” she recalled telling herself. Instead of thinking constantly about performing, Shruti decided to behave as if the characters were simply a group of people having fun, arguing and getting into trouble.

That is where the Lucknowi word “Tafri” came into play. Shruti explained that the word is used for having fun or goofing around. “So, I goofed around where the scene called for it, got into scuffles where needed, and cried when the moment demanded it,” she said. “I didn't hold back at all as an actor, and I think that helped me immensely.”

The actress is also confident about Gangs of Gorakhpur standing alongside other projects in a competitive entertainment landscape. Shruti believes competition can actually bring out the best in artists. “I believe competition is good because working under pressure often leads to better results,” she said. According to her, healthy competition is preferable to having no challenge at all, because without it artists can become complacent.

Shruti is particularly proud of the way Gangs of Gorakhpur was made. “We’ve created something good, and Gangs of Gorakhpur isn't your typical, run-of-the-mill show,” she said. The production chose real locations rather than relying entirely on constructed sets, with the team spending around 15 or 16 days shooting in Lucknow.

“We were truly living the story,” Shruti explained. That immersive experience appears to have played an important role in helping the cast connect with the world of the series. And despite the competition surrounding the show, Shruti believes the team came prepared. “So, if there is competition, I think we came prepared for it,” she said.

One of the biggest attractions of the show is the relationship between Raghav and Sonal. Shruti describes their chemistry as “both cute and intense.” Sonal is bold, dominant and stubborn, and she often takes charge when dealing with Raghav. She even threatens him when she feels he is making the wrong choices.

But the dynamic between Shruti and Namish away from the cameras was considerably lighter. The actress revealed that the two would often exchange glances and silently react to whatever was happening during intense scenes. Namish, she said, loves to joke around and is always laughing.

“If an intense scene was playing out and he’d suddenly drop a quiet one-liner, I’d lose it,” Shruti laughed. “I’d be like, ‘Bro, someone is dying here!’” Despite the seriousness of the show, Namishs humour became an important part of their working relationship. “He makes me laugh so much that my cheeks actually hurt,” she added, describing their bond as “really quirky.”

While there were plenty of lighter moments, Shruti also had to navigate some extremely emotionally demanding scenes. One of the most memorable involved Sonal losing her father. The actress said the scene took her into a completely different emotional zone, similar to an experience she had while filming Gathbandhan, where her character lost her sister.

“That was the moment where I played something, and I entered a zone from which it took me a little while to return,” she recalled. Shruti said there were several other scenes in Gangs of Gorakhpur where she experienced emotions so intense that she could only think, “God forbid I ever have to live through that for real.”

The physical demands of the shoot provided another unforgettable experience. While filming in Lucknow, Shruti found herself struggling with the intense heat during a courtroom sequence. Wearing a lawyers outfit and waiting for the director to call cut, she said she was practically preparing to collapse.

“The moment ‘Cut’ was called, I felt faint from the heat,” she revealed. The irony was not lost on her because she is from Lucknow and usually associates the city with pleasant weather. Instead, the shoot gave her a very different experience of the place she knows so well.

For Shruti, performing emotionally devastating scenes requires a certain degree of self-torture. “As an actor, when you perform a scene like that, you have to set your own self aside,” she explained. She constantly reminds herself of what the character has just experienced and asks herself what it would feel like if something similar happened to her.

“It’s a form of self-torture, really,” she admitted, because actors deliberately place themselves inside emotional spaces that people naturally want to avoid. Once there, however, Shruti believes the only option is to surrender to the emotion. “I imagine myself in that situation, and I just surrender to the feeling,” she said, while hoping that such tragedies never happen to anyone in real life.

And switching back to reality is not always immediate. “Naturally, it takes some time to snap out of that state; switching off and on again isn't easy,” Shruti said. That emotional hangover is perhaps one of the less visible challenges of playing characters who experience extreme pain and loss.

Despite the intensity of Gangs of Gorakhpur, Shruti is already looking ahead. “I’m trying my best to keep working on great projects,” she said with a laugh. Office-Office 2 has recently wrapped, Gangs of Gorakhpur is now arriving for audiences, and she teased that another interesting project is also in the pipeline.

For now, however, Shruti wants audiences to experience Sonals journey for themselves. “Please watch Gangs of Gorakhpur every Saturday at 6 PM on the Alright TV app, and do let me know in the comments what you think of it,” she said.

From a fiercely devoted lover to a woman willing to challenge the man she loves, Sonal Mishra has given Shruti Sharma the chance to throw caution out of the window. And if her own description is anything to go by, she did exactly that. She did not simply play Sonal — she allowed herself to be bold, messy, emotional, funny and completely uninhibited, making Gangs of Gorakhpur an important new chapter in her acting journey.

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