Actress Rashmi Agdekar is all set to reprise her role of Chandni in the second season of the popular web series Dev DD, producer Ekta Kapoor's new-age retelling of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel Devdas.
In Dev DD, Rashmi plays Chandni, based on the character Chunnilal in Sara Chandra's original creation. In the web series, which first dropped in 2017, the character is a lesbian.
"Back in 2017, when web series were just starting out in India, we had mostly seen caricaturish and stereotypical portrayals of LGBTQA characters on screen. But Chandni was not written that way. She is a regular small-town girl from Jaipur with her set of values, but she likes girls. It was this aspect that drew me to this role, as it normalises the representation of homosexual characters on screen, because that is how it is in real life," she claimed.
Rashmi is super excited about the second season. "Dev DD at the core of it is a series about love, acceptance, and breaking stereotypes. Last season we left things at a point, where Chandni discovers that her father and her best friend are having a 'thing'. How would she react to that? You'll see a completely different trait of her personality now. Expect a lot of drama and twists and turns this time," said Rashmi, a trained Kathak dancer who made her Bollywood debut with the Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer Andhadhun in 2018.
Her upcoming Dev DD season 2 will stream on Alt Balaji and Zee5 from February 20. The series gives an unconventional twist to the Devdas storyline rendering gender reversals. In the show, Devdas is Devika, played by Asheema Vardaan. Akhil Kapur plays Parth (Paro) while Sanjay Suri is Anurag (Chandramukhi).