Actor Shahana Goswami says she was drawn to the Netflix show Bombay Begums for its portrayal of reality in a layered and nuanced manner. Created by Alankrita Shrivastava, the show explores the dreams and desires of five women from different strata of society as they fight for survival in Mumbai.

Goswami, known for delivering critically-lauded performances in movies such as Rock On, Heroine and Gali Guliyan, essays the role of Fatima in the series. The actor said the journey of her character, who feels crushed under the weight of her husband’s expectation for a child, is something that many women go through in life.

“For me, it was a joy to be able to find a show that was so subtly layered and depicted reality without underlining things. You’re constantly coming across people and they’re going through so many things in their life.

“I’ve had interactions with friends on set where they are going through similar things. They’re going through IVF and failing at it, and yet continued to do their work on set. We live that reality. You go to work in offices and we don”t know what people are going through,” the actor told PTI in an interview.

Goswami said it was interesting to play a character who is witnessing a crisis at every stage of her life whether it is her struggle at home or at the office.

“She’s constantly dealing with a new situation and not getting time to even process what has already happened. There was a lot of really beautiful human frailty in her that she’s not seeing and not addressing. She is forced to see and address eventually — the dichotomies of being a woman of being a working person and a family person, all these things that we straddled as women.”

The 34-year-old actor said she was able to grow with the character and even reflect on herself as a human being.

“All the characters kind of give you that moment of ‘Oh, my God. That’s so true. I never thought of that.’ This is what was the beauty of this script. While playing the parts or while watching it, there are so many moments where you have those ”so true” moments. That’s the realism in the show that each character is reflecting something or the other by just being themselves.”

The show also features Pooja Bhatt, Amruta Subhash, Plabita Borthakur and Aadhya Anand.

Subhash, who has amassed acclaim in recent years with her performances in films and shows such Gully Boy, Raman Raghav and Sacred Games, plays the role of Lily, a bar dancer trying to exit the profession to give her son a better life.

The actor described her character as “one of the best mothers of the world”. “She is a bar dancer, but she”s a mother first and her son is the centre of her universe. I think she is one of the best mothers I have seen. I’ve been fortunate to play different shades of motherhood with each project. But this role was completely someone else because she is a single mother and she has to do prostitution to make both ends meet.

“The way she’s fighting and doing the best for her son was something really interesting for me.”

Anand is in the role of Shai, a teenager who has started to figure out ways of life. She does not have a great bond with her stepmother Rani (Pooja Bhatt). “She wants to be like other people, she wants to fit in… She later realises that differences actually make us unique. Those differences are just what makes us us, so we don’t need to fit in. We can embrace our own personalities.”