Sacred Games star Kubra Sait on being girl with balls, love for Nawazuddin, Bengaluru

Chirpy, chatty and absolutely ‘cuckoo’ that’s namma hudugi Kubbra Sait for you. Striking a conversation with her is a delight as she greets you gleefully in Kannada before moving on to talking about her role in Sacred Games. Kubbra, who plays Cuckoo, a transgender in the Netflix series directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, is being bombarded with compliments and praise from audiences. “I’m just soaking in all the happiness and joy. For a couple of seconds, I feel like I deserve this, then I feel ‘all this is happening too soon, how do you do something better than your best?

You can never ever reach out and find a role like this, this has to happen to you,” she says.

Kubbra’s tryst with Sacred Games happened when Ankur Tewari recommended her name to Anurag Kashyap. “The next day, I met Anurag at MAMI and my heart skipped a heartbeat as he knew who I was! I was asked to give an audition and soon, I did a look test and in a few days, I was shooting. This had to be destiny never could I have imagined something like this would happen. Anurag said that only a girl with balls could play this role!” With no time at hand, taking on the role was quite a challenge for the lady with the gift of the gab, as she had to dance on the show. “I dance like an uncle who’s drunk! Learning how to dance was my biggest challenge,” she says.

And for the inevitable question, how was it working with the phenomenal Nawazuddin Siddiqui? “He’s mad I love him! I call him the badass lover. If he, as Ghaitonde, had not loved Cuckoo the way he did, my character would not be able to give back. He’s a very shy guy he’ll sit in the corner and smile and won’t talk to anybody. But I’m this mad hatter — I hug him, kiss him on his cheek. I was that stray that got adopted,” quips Kubbra.

As for her other acting projects, Kubra has Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy and two more web series in her kitty. Coming to her love for her hometown Bengaluru, she can’t help but break into a brilliant smile as she says, “I have to be in the ooru for three things the dosa in CTR, Nagarjuna and my mother’s biryani! I take a lot of pride when saying that I come from Bengaluru. In fact, when I land here and talk to the taxi drivers in Kannada, they’re so shocked as they don’t expect me to speak the language!”

Ask her if we will ever see her and her talented sibling Danish Sait together in a project and she exclaims, “I’d love to work with him. We see a lot of each other on stage he’s so fluid and comfortable in his own skin. We both remain unaffected by each other’s fame. In Bengaluru, I’m Danish’s sister and in Mumbai, he’s Kubbra’s brother! My brother still calls me didi, which is so endearing that’s how our mother raised us. That’s why I say Bengaluru is so responsible for me having my head on my shoulders,” she smiles.