Parineeti Chopra makes web series debut with ‘Shaque’, says ‘Chamkila’ revived interest in her

Parineeti Chopra is stepping into the web-series space for the first time with Netflix crime thriller Shaque, a format the actor says she had been eager to explore after working in films and reality television. The series, which begins streaming Thursday, features Chopra as a mother searching for her missing child. Directed by Rensil D’Silva, who has also created the show with Siddharth P Malhotra, Shaque marks another shift in Chopra’s career following the critical appreciation she received for Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila in 2024.

‘Wanted to be part of binge-watching culture’

Chopra said her decision to enter long-form streaming was driven by a desire to work in a format she had not previously explored.

“I just wanted to do a series; it was just a new format for me that I had not explored. I had done reality shows, films, I wanted to do this new format, this series thing. I wanted to be part of the binge-watching culture,” she told PTI.

The actor said she had been in discussions with Netflix for some time as she waited for a project that she felt was right for her streaming debut.

An avid viewer of international series herself, Chopra counts Game of Thrones and Narcos among her favourite shows. The opportunity to work in a format that allows stories and characters to develop across several episodes was therefore something she had wanted to pursue.

Shaque places her at the centre of an emotionally charged crime thriller, with the disappearance of her character’s child driving the narrative.

Pregnancy discovered during shoot

Despite playing a mother confronting the disappearance of her child, Chopra said she had no personal experience of motherhood to draw upon when she began filming the series.

The actor, who welcomed her son in October last year, revealed that she discovered she was pregnant midway through the shoot.

“I wasn’t a mother then. At that time, I was purely acting, depending on the material and the director. I didn’t draw anything out of real life,” she said.

Chopra believes the distance between her own life and that of the character may actually have helped her performance. Had she already been a mother, she said, the emotional weight of the story could have made it difficult to separate herself from the character.

“I don’t think I could have done it because if I had, I would have cried in every scene. Then there would have been no performance. So, thank God, I didn’t have a child in real life then,” she said.

‘Chamkila awoke people again’

Chopra also reflected on the trajectory of her film career and credited Amar Singh Chamkila with changing the kind of work that began coming her way.

The Imtiaz Ali film, which starred Diljit Dosanjh as Punjabi singer Amar Singh Chamkila and Chopra as his wife and singing partner Amarjot Kaur, was released on Netflix in 2024. Chopra said its reception helped renew filmmakers’ interest in her after several of her earlier films had failed commercially.

“I had many films that had not done well, and people tend to forget about you or your work or talent, whatever you want to label it. I think Chamkila just kind of awoke people again, makers again, towards me,” she said.

According to Chopra, the projects offered to her after the film reflected the impact it had on perceptions of her as a performer.

“And the kind of work that I started getting offered after that was really testament to that,” she said, adding that the film had proved significant for both her and Dosanjh.

Chopra said she remained thankful to have had a film such as Amar Singh Chamkila at that stage of her career.

Ensemble cast for crime thriller

Shaque brings together a large ensemble cast alongside Chopra. Tahir Raj Bhasin, Soni Razdan, Harleen Sethi, Jennifer Winget, Sumeet Vyas, Anup Soni and Chaitanya Choudhry feature in prominent roles.

The series has been produced by Siddharth P Malhotra and Sapna Malhotra under Alchemy Productions.

For Chopra, the project represents both a format change and another step in the career phase that followed Chamkila. Having worked across films, reality television and now a streaming series, she sees Shaque as an opportunity to enter the binge-watching space not merely as a viewer but as its newest leading actor.