Tina Philip: TV shows have always kept women at forefront

Content on television has often been termed “regressive”, but actor Tina Philip considers this an unfair tag for the medium. She, on the contrary, credits the small screen for telling women-centric stories.

“The constant debate around TV content being regressive should be done away with. For me, television is the only medium that has kept women at the forefront of stories and has been sketching powerful characters who stand up against any wrong being done to them,” the Ek Aastha Aisi Bhee and Aye Mere Humsafar actor tells.

This, she says, is starkly different from films, which are “mainly based on heroes and heroism”. Philip elaborates, “In a year, only a handful of films are based on female characters, whereas TV is all about women and has empowered them since its beginning. How can such a medium be called unprogressive?”

On the personal front, Philip’s wedding to beau, actor Nikhil Sharma, had to be postponed just four days before the D-day because of the pandemic-induced lockdown in 2021. Ask her when they plan to tie the knot, and she says she will “let life run its course”. “We plan a lot of things, but life doesn’t seem to work like that always. Since then (the wedding being pushed), I’ve learnt to go slow. There is no rush as marriage is just a formality for both of us. Nikhil and I have been focusing on work of late. Ab jab honi hogi tab shaadi bhi ho jayegi. The money is still deposited at the hotel (laughs), so there is nothing to worry about,” says Philip, who has wrapped up a crime thriller with actors Nana Patekar and Meezaan Jaffrey and is busy with her ongoing show Kumkum Bhagya.