Sonali Bendre has opened up about the emotional weight of playing Mona in Prime Video’s crime thriller ‘Raakh’. The actor said the character’s quiet grief and limited dialogue made the role deeply internalized. While she found working without long scenes of dialogue easier than expected, leaving the character behind after a day on set proved far 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 ‘Raakh’, which is now streaming on Prime Video. The series is a fictional investigative thriller set in the late 1970s and draws inspiration from the Ranga-Billa case involving the kidnapping and murder of siblings Geeta and Sanjay Chopra in Delhi.
Sonali Bendre on playing Mona in ‘Raakh’
Bendre said the writing and preparation behind the series gave her a strong base before she began performing. “More than 50%, I would say, was already done,” she said, crediting the material that the team provided.Mona has relatively few spoken lines in the series. Bendre said this aspect worked in her favor. “Not having dialogues was the easier part for me,” she said, adding that she no longer finds it as easy to memorize pages of dialogue as she did earlier in her career.The actor explained that silence brought a different challenge. With fewer lines, she had to communicate Mona’s pain through expression, pauses, and emotional restraint. That process required her to hold on to the character’s state of mind for longer.Bendre said the role became more real because it had to be internalized. She described the difficulty of separating herself from Mona once the cameras stopped rolling.
‘Raakh’ cast and crime thriller story
“It is more internalized and that also makes it more real,” Bendre said while discussing her approach to the role. She admitted that she struggled to put the character aside at the end of the day.“This was one character that I did struggle to leave behind on the sets,” she said. “I did carry it home sometimes and that was scary for me.”‘Raakh’ follows an investigation that triggers a nationwide search and explores the clash between crime and justice. The show uses a fictional format while drawing from a case that shocked Delhi in the late 1970s.The series stars Ali Fazal, Sonali Bendre, Aamir Bashir, Akash Makhija, and Ramandeep Yadav. Prosit Roy directs and executive produces the show. Bendre’s comments underline how Mona’s restrained presence shaped her performance in ‘Raakh’, where emotion often comes through silence rather than speech.