Adaa Khan is currently receiving appreciation for her role as Hrishika in Ishika Shahi’s psychological thriller The Lift, streaming on the Directors Kut Production YouTube channel. The series brings four strangers together inside a lift, where their situation slowly unfolds into a story of secrets, guilt, regret and unanswered questions.
Talking about the series and its exploration of human emotions, Adaa says, “The show explores every emotion of a human being, including guilt and regret and, of course, the consequences of our actions. Even if you think that you have not done anything wrong, everybody has their own perspective. Everybody has their own definition of right and wrong.”
She adds, “In their own convenient way, even doing a sin may not be a sin for somebody else. That is what makes the whole thing interesting.”
For Adaa, Hrishika was interesting because she cannot simply be described as good or bad. The actress says, “Hrishika, when she learns about herself during the journey, still doesn’t think that she did anything wrong.”
Describing the personality of Hrishika, she says, “She is a good person, she is bubbly, she is glamorous, she works, and she is a modern woman. But there is something that she is hiding. There is something that she regrets doing in her life, and she has not told that to anybody.”
One of Hrishika’s most emotional moments comes when she receives a call from her mother. Recalling the scene, Adaa says, “She receives a call from her mother, and she is very happy that her mother is calling. But her mother cannot hear her, and she gets very upset. Then she hears her mother crying. It was a moment when she did not understand what happened, whether she was alive or not, or what was happening. It was very heartbreaking.”
The uncertainty around whether the characters are alive or dead also becomes an important part of the story. Adaa explains, “I was always thinking that maybe we are still alive. The lift will start anytime. Maybe it is just dark or maybe God is testing us. Maybe some kind of test is happening. We really don’t know if we are dead or alive.”
As the characters begin understanding their reality, they are forced to look back at their lives. Adaa shares, “And the moment we get to know, each one of us is just numb. We don’t know what to do. We start discussing the regrets we have. It is like our whole life is in front of us, and we think about what we wanted to do in life but didn’t do.”
The confined setting also helped the actors connect with their characters. “We actually felt the journey of each character and saw the development of each character in front of us. It was like we lived each character. Because we were confined inside that lift, the bonding was great,” she says.
