For someone whose name is practically a mood board with bold prints, unapologetic femininity, and a label that has become a lifestyle, Masaba Gupta has a surprisingly quiet reason for acting: peace.
"Acting, be it an ad, or a series or anything that I am working on, is therapeutic only because it takes me away from the everyday operations of how to run a business," she says. "I come back refreshed, I come back recharged, even when I do a short stint. So it definitely makes me feel a lot more at peace with the other version which is that being a founder, being somebody who's an operator for my business, I think that acting is interesting to me only because I can go on to a set and be either myself or a character and come away and not worry about everything else that goes on, on a set."
At a time when celebrities routinely blur the line between creative work and personal branding, Masaba is deliberate about keeping the two separate. The designer-actor, who first played a heightened version of herself in the series Masaba Masaba, is clear-eyed about what the craft offers her, and what it doesn't need to do.
"Acting can never be an extension of the brand Masaba," she says. "Unless I'm shooting for a show like the one I did, or playing myself, it's never going to be that. It's always going to be a departure from it." She pauses, then adds: "And I think that departure is welcome."
The dual life of founder by day, and actor by choice, isn't a contradiction she's trying to resolve. It's a balance she has consciously built. On a set, she explains, she can "be either myself or a character and come away not worrying about everything else that goes on." That freedom, she suggests, is the whole point. "That's why it feels exciting," she says. "It makes me feel at peace with the other version of myself - the founder, the operator."
