When my daughter is a teenager, I don’t want to be her best friend: Lara Dutta

Actor Lara Dutta, who is garnering praise for her refreshing character in her latest show ‘Hiccups and Hookups’, opened up about the relationship that exists between the mother-daughter characters in the show, in contrast to the one she shares with her daughter Saira.

“My daughter is nine years old. My relationship with her is very very different from what it’s like to be a mom of an 18-year-old teenager,” Lara told ANI. In the show, Lara’s character Vasudha shares a cool and unfiltered relationship with her teenage daughter Kavanya, played by Shinnova.

When asked if she’d want such an equation in her personal life as well, Lara revealed that she is all in for establishing a friendly relationship with her daughter, however, not in favour of diluting her role as a mother.

She expressed her viewpoint, saying, “It’s very nice when you hear mothers of teenage girls say that we are not really mother and daughter, we are more like best friends. But I know that when my daughter is a teenager, I don’t want to be her best friend. I want to be her mother. Because if I am her best friend, then who the hell is her mother?”

Talking about her own character, the 43-year-old actor shared that it’s exciting to play a character close to her own age on screen.

“Invariably, we are always playing characters who are much younger than what we really are. So it’s refreshing that today content is being made which headlines a 40 something actress playing a 40 something protagonist,” she said.

Lara believes that this show, which has been making headlines for its unfiltered sexual content, is simply a reflection of what’s out there in the real world.

She claimed, “We are not saying anything to be bold or make a statement or shock people. The show is talking about very real scenarios which really exist for women across all age groups, whether you are in a relationship or not.”

Lara added, “Every single woman who has married has always wondered whether it would have been any different if it was any other man. Any single woman has always wondered what it would be like if I liked a girl instead of a boy. So these are things that have crossed every single human’s mind at one point in time or another. Whether you act on them or not is a different story. But if you had the opportunity to act on them, would you or would you not? I guess that’s the question that the show will answer.”

‘Hiccups and Hookups’, also starring Prateik Babbar, is streaming on Lionsgate Play.