CLASS, a critically acclaimed Netflix production, had taken the streaming platform by storm since its release, earning accolades for its compelling storyline, exceptional performances, and thought-provoking themes. At the center of this mesmerizing tale is Yashika, a complex and multifaceted character whose journey resonates deeply with audiences. With each passing episode, viewers had grown more captivated by her charisma, vulnerability, and the layers of mystery that shroud her true nature. Much credits goes to Ayesha Kanga, the actress who won everyone’s heart with her performance of a ‘mean’ school girl.
Although CLASS was not Ayesha’s first acting gig, she surely proved her worth as a performer in Ashim Alhuwalia’s adaptation of the Spanish series ELITE. Having dabbled in modelling and graphic designing, Ayesha’s exciting journey back to the world of acting was initiated by the changing landscapes of OTT content, one which compelled her to take a deep, immersive dive into the kaleidoscopic world of content.
As the fans of her show wait with bated breaths for the second season to drop, Ayesha Kanga exclusively spoke with News18 Showsha to express her glee and joy for all the love CLASS received. In this tell-all interview, Ayesha gave a glimpse of her character arc in the second season, how her association with the Netflix series went beyond the acting credits, about the criticism that the show received, her aspirations as an actor and more.
Here are the excerpts:
How thrilled and excited are you to go back on the sets and take the story forward from where it ended? In terms of your character development and trajectory, what all is store in for the viewers in the next season?
I am super excited that we have been renewed for a second Season. It’s the most exciting thing when your hard efforts come to fruition. In the new season, there will be more work, more storylines, more arcs. I am glad it did well and I am glad that eleven newcomers who came from nowhere, who auditioned for years and years really deserve to be here, for people who created a show and were on a show that went viral and did so well. I am glad that the audience is taking to it as well. I am super excited about Yashika’s character because this is really where you kind of see her character being developed. In Season 1, she was kind of a catty woman who annoys a couple who fell in love. You saw a little bit about her life but you didn’t see everything and all the questions weren’t answered. So in the next season, you’ll see her character develop and I am very excited for people to fall in love with Yashika and not just to feel it’s an annoying, hated character. This season would be more focused on Yashika and I can’t wait for people to enjoy that. There’s more to Yashika than a mean girl and there’s more that meets the eye.
You got shortlisted for both Koel and Yashika’s character but you had set your mind to play Yashika only. Both the characters were amazing in their own way but what had drawn you towards Yashika?
I did get shortlisted for both Yashika and Koel and I ended up choosing to do Yashika. Though I love Koel just as much, I have a soft corner for Yashika. Infact, when I learnt that I was shortlisted for a show which is going to be an adaptation of Spanish Netflix Show Class, my sister and I decided that the next step was to binge all three seasons of ELITE. To see what I was going to get into. And ofcourse after binging all three seasons in three days, we unanimously decided that our favourite character was Lu, who’s Yashika based on. Loved her because she had a really good arc. She barely had a role in Season 1, she was just there as an annoying menace. And in Season 2, we understood her, we understood why her family does what they do, why she is the way she is. Also, I find that Yashika on CLASS was written a lot better than Lu. So it was more exciting for me to play someone who had just been followed through very thoroughly as a character. So obviously, Lu is my favourite character in this entire ELITE universe and to be able to play her was a dream. It didn’t matter if I didn’t look the part but I was willing to do anything to reprise my favourite character from ELITE.
How difficult was it for you to grow a mean bone for Yashika? Did it impact you in any way?
Being mean was the hardest thing to do. We were workshopped quite thoroughly for about three months before we started filming and literally my only goal in the workshop was to be mean. And that’s all what my acting coach was making me do. He was like, ‘okay now say something mean to Saba, be mean, be meaner, make it come through your lips, really feel it in your bones, in your teeth’. It was really hard to be mean. And after spending so much time with Yashika, it was easy to be mean. It was easy to write mean screenplay and mean dialogues for her. Infact, I became so mean on the show that after a while, I didn’t know how not to be mean? And then to get out of that mean phase was difficult. So for the first few promos and interview phases, all I ever learnt to do was to be mean on camera. And then I realised I don’t have to be mean on camera anymore, I can be myself. And then I had to unlearn what I learnt for camera. So actually, it was interesting process of learning to be mean and getting so good at it that I forget that I don’t have to be mean all the time and I can be myself again.
Compared to how Yashika was originally written, what were some of the nuances that you brought to her and whether you had the freedom to improv and approach the character as per your sensibility?
Actually, I would go so far to saying that 80% of the screenplay for Yashika was written by me. We had full liberty to improv. Right from the classroom scenes, you’ll see are all improvised. We were given a basic skeleton and structure and a much older person had written it. So I was given the liberty to make the lines look like they were truly written by or said by a much younger person for example a GenZ kid. All the insults, everything about it was written by me and my director would come with the script and just before we would film, he would say, ‘Okay, how can you make this your own? How can we make this look different?’. And I will say something and he would be like, ‘yes, that’s what we are going to say’. So yeah, 80% of it was written by me so I’ll say I had a huge part to play in the screenplay. Infact, even the comments on the live stream and all the WhatsApp chats or the mean chats were written by me. I was super involved. I don’t know how not to be involved? They loved that. They were very happy to do some extra work and let people make something of their own.
How was Ashim Ahluwalia able to dish out a show so balanced and intricate and bring out the best out of you and all the other actors?
I think Ashim Ahluwalia is really a superstar. He is very good at working with new people. Definitely great at working with new actors. He really knows how to get a performance out of you. He can figure out how 11 of us work and he directed us differently. Some people required negative reinforcement, some people required positive reinforcement, some people required no direction at all. Sometimes he would rile us up and get us in a really bad mood. He would insult us in front of everybody. He would make sure he would get a performance out of us which was amazing because I think by the end of it, not even 1% had anything to say about the acting. They were like ‘Wow they truly deserved to be here. They acted their part’. And that’s Ashim, he figured out how to get a performance out of us. It was very difficult to do. It required a lot of hard work but he’s an ‘evil genius’ like I like to say. This world exists because of him. He created this world which is honest, real, raw. Not all of us were actors before we started doing this so I think we got our own real world perspective into our characters which made it very real and our characters relatable. He wanted that. He wanted actual young kids to come in and write a show with him. And I think that’s why a lot of people took to it because even if you haven’t been to a school like Hampton or not, they would actually know people like the characters exist. It’s all Aushim. I really owe my success and everything to him and even the way he filmed it, he is a national award-winning cinematographer, it really fed my creative side. He is so good at what he does and it was an honour to work with him.
Was there any kind of pressure and fear related to this before signing this show? Since it’s an adaptation?
Knowing that nobody likes an adaptation, it played a huge part. We all walked into the show knowing that there would be some sort of controversy, there will be some kind of backlash in terms of ‘hey you have taken our
favourite show and ruined it’. That happens all the time. To recreate an already good piece of art is an extremely difficult task. Adaptations are really hard and there is a lot of pressure. But I think we really did a good job of adapting the show. And I think just because we wanted a way, a way to talk about what was real, raw and important. Of course, we approached the topics very cautiously but we spoke about everything that the young people are going through right now. We talked about the difficulties and that made the show more palatable. I think now having watched ELITE, It’s easy to see why it would work so well in the Indian context because it’s a different room to have and the have nots in Delhi. It’s so in your face that it makes the world more believable. The hatred, the negativity, all of that makes it so much real. And ofcourse there are various things like the music and the background score, it was so
good and we used these Indian artists. The album covered so much music and people discovered so much music because of the show. I loved that we did these things and my favorite part of them all was Chintan and Nayan, the Dhruv and Farukh relationship. It was so good. For the first time I have seen whether in an Indian show or an international show that the homosexual relationship was not used as a token homosexual relationship. It was genuine and it was the relationship that everybody was championing. It was such an integral part to the story. It was so cautiously and beautifully created and put forth. So things like these that were done with so much care. That made the show a success and not just another hated adaptation. I am so glad that we took the time to really make the show. And it took a really long time to make it. It took two years to make. All the efforts, all the time that went into tvis, it really worked out. It goes to show a good thing takes time.
When the show came out, along with the love that it recieved, it also was heavily criticised. What are your thoughts on that?
Where there is praise, there will always be criticism. It’s okay, it only proves that the show has been watched by enough people to love it and hate it. So for me as a first time actor, it’s an honour that people cared enough about the show to even criticize it. In terms of it being unrealistic, I don’t think that’s the case. I know people exactly like these characters and I have personally drawn inspiration from people who genuinely talk like this, behave like this, who have life like this. Especially in these rich Delhi schools where their parents are completely neglecting the kids and rewarding them through materialistic things, they lead a very different life. So I don’t think this is an unrealistic adaptation at all. This is very real. There are billions of people in India and obviously all kinds of people. Each one of these characters are based on a very real human being whom we all know in real life.
So I don’t think it was over-the-top at all. When you’ve grown up with a certain lifestyle, being given a car at a very young age, you live in a bungalow with all the riches and wealth and everything you’ll ever need except the one thing that you really need from a parent which is time and attention, you are going to grow up really different, you are going to grow up as someone who believes the whole world revolves around you and your actions don’t have consequences. So these are things that really happen and I am so glad that we decided to set the show in Delhi because this is truly a place where you get to see that have/have not divide.
CLASS delicately assimilated social issues into it’s narrative. How important are these aspects for you as well as the cast and crew of CLASS?
I think shows like these are extremely important. It’s important that shows like these are realistically depicted, whether Bollywood or Hollywood. I am so glad that Indian kids get to watch the show about these pertinent topics that they are probably going through in an Indian context. So it’s very different if a kid in an international show goes through homophobia than a kid in an Indian school who goes through the same. It’s very important to have a dialogue because the kid needs to know that it’s not a taboo. We need to talk about these things more openly. This needs to be something that everybody knows about. Bridging the gap and creating these conversations, it helps kids growing up. So I am really glad we did it because this was extremely important for the cast and crew. We handled all of these extremely delicately. We had conversation about these things with our director, crew and cast members. It was something that was talked about openly and all the time. We would finish doing the scene and talk to our fellow actors and have a discussions. We’ll talk about if this was okay, if we approached this well enough, if we need to do more research. I am glad that we approached these topics delicately and I am glad we approached it like research. It wasn’t approached like an actor playing a meaty role. We were looking at it like a research. And I think that’s also a difference between all of us not being actors and coming from different fields. It was purely a research project. And we wanted to do justice because we felt it was important and we talked about it in the right way. We cared about these things.
Talking about ELITE, a lot of ELITE fans were buzzing all over reddit after CLASS was dropped.what kind of reception you recieved for your performance from people belonging to the foreign countries?
It’s so funny because you can see in your Instagram all these stories that you’ve been tagged in and some of them were in all these different languages I can’t understand. They are dubbed in all these different languages and I am watching it in Spanish, in this language and that language and people are talking about it, making fan edits. So the reception has been amazing even though I don’t understand what they are saying but they are so fond of the show and I am so happy. It’s so rare that you get to do something this noble at a scale like this. And the ELITE fans have been so kind. They were fans of the show enough to watch its adaptation. They are really going to be your hardest critics but they’ve been so nice, so kind and so supportive that it really does mean we did a good job. Because if fans of ELITE like the show, that means they are the hardest critics to please. I am just happy that we did some fan service and we engaged them. And we gave them what they wanted. Fandoms are important. I don’t take it lightly.
Previously, you played Naaz on Channel V Gumrah, a rape victim. So how was the channel v phase? How did it help you recognise your acting streak?
Channel V Gumrah was my first ever gig and I did that because I had just chanced upon it. I was never actually interested in acting
back then. I just did it as something to do alongside college. It was not really something that I was looking at doing full time, it just happened at that time. But that role spoke to me, that entire episode spoke to me. The script was really good and it was real. It was about women’s problems. It was about how a very confident and friendly woman who only has the best intentions for her friends can also get caught in a trap. It was a really special role and I had approached it with care, I researched it, made sure that nothing was taken lightly. After my initial Channel V days, I didn’t want to be an actor anymore. I wanted to go to design school and I wanted to study and I wanted to be an art director, graphic designer, an artist. And that’s what I eventually went on to do. And for ten years, I didn’t even look at acting as something I would get ever get back into. And I also think this is because of the kind of content I was being subjected to in India. At that time, there was nothing for me to really aspire to do in terms of being an actor. But Naaz and that show really did appeal to me because they were talking about pertinent topics. They were having the heavy and the heart conversation that was really important for that time. But overall, I was really an uninspired actor but cut to present, the content has gotten so good and massive. There’s so much to draw inspiration from. Kids these days can aspire to be like Vijay Varma or a Shefali Shah or Tabu. I feel we didn’t had actors like that at that time and the content was very different. So I fell in love with acting again because the content on OTT is so good. It was that that pulled me back into this space.
You have to juggle between modeling and acting. And you seem to do that with ease. How you prioritize the two discipline and how are you able to take out time for both these disciplines?
I think it was really hard to do when I was filming CLASS? Because for two years I was juggling being a model, graphics designer and filming a show. At that time, it was very difficult to do. But now I think my career has taken a full 180° and it’s completely shifted and focused onto acting and creative direction? And I think modelling has definitely taken a backseat. Though everything that I imbibed as a model, the discipline, the image making, the poise, being comfortable in front of the camera and knowing exactly what to do in front of the camera, just the discipline that comes with being a model, I have definitely imbibed it to my creative direction life and to my acting life. If anything, it’s been extremely helpful.
You had said earlier that Zoya Akhtar’s Made In Heaven inspired you to come back to acting. Did you hear anything from her about CLASS?
I got shortlisted to play a character in Made In Heaven Season 2 and I didn’t end up making it to the part, which I was really upset about. But I was on the final shortlist to be on the episode of Made In Heaven Season 2 as one of the brides. But that would have been the coolest job ever. Then my life definitely would have come full circle. Maybe I’ll be able to do Season 3, if there is a Season 3. Although I didn’t hear anything from Zoya Akhtar, Arjun Mathur did send me a message that he loved CLASS, he loved my performance and he sent me a warming message, kind of welcoming me to the industry. That’s when I told him that Made In Heaven made me want to act and I loved his performance and I loved the show. So we kind of connected post CLASS coming out. So it was really cool to have people from Made In Heaven get in touch with me and tell me that I did a good job. But I would love Zoya Akhtar, if she ever got in touch, I am open to doing anything in any of your shows or movies. I am a fan and I think you’re an amazing woman director, so underrated. So I am open.
Besides Class, in what way do would you like to expand your acting horizons. What kind of projects and characters attract you and how do you plan to navigate your acting career in the coming times.
I would love it if my acting expands beyond CLASS. I look at roles as people. People I can empathise with. People who could
make a good story. Ofcourse, people who are real, who are raw, who I can connect with personally. I don’t mind taking on a slightly more controversial role or less talked about role. I just want to do justice to the character I play. Whether it’s a love story, or if it’a a hard-hitting one or just another teen drama. I think whatever character I do take on, I take on with research and I make sure that I do it the best I could do. And speak to people and do justice. So right now, I am definitely looking forward to work. I want to be a part of different kinds of work. Obviously, the heavier, more hard hitting roles appeal to me, more difficult roles really fuels you as an actor. But I am ready to play someone completely different from Yashika.