Former Miss Universe Sushmita Sen Surprises Fans With Her Cameo Appearance In Srijit Mukerji’s “Shekhar Home”

Not many know that Bollywood star and former Miss Universe Sushmita Sen has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in “Shekhar Home”, a detective web series inspired by the literary works of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle.

Directed by Srijit Mukerji and Rohan Sippy, the West Bengal-set series is a Hindi adaptation of Sherlock Holmes stories starring Kay Kay Menon as the titular sleuth.

Set in the early 1990s, “Shekhar Home” is written by Aniruddha Guha and Niharika Puri with dialogues by Vaibhav Vishal.

In one of its six episodes, a black-and-white picture of a young Sen makes a guest appearance. Her historic win as the first Miss Universe from India in 1994 is shown a few years away as per the events in the show.

When Shekhar looks at the photograph, he remarks: “Isko toh Miss Universe hona chahiye (She should become Miss Universe)”
Asked how it all came to be, Mukherji said he secured due permission from Sen, who did her first and only Bengali film “Nirbaak” with him back in 2015.

“We are good friends. I had to call up Sush and take permission for that. When I called her, she said ‘Now, instead of casting me you’ve started casting my pictures!’ the director told PTI in an interview.

Not just Sen but Indian cricketers R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja also find a place of honour in the JioCinema series.

“Shekhar Home” has two cops Ashwin and Jadeja named after the top spinners, who earlier this year went past the Anil Kumble-Harbhajan Singh duo to become the most successful Test bowling pair for India.

As cricket buffs, Mukherji said he and Guha wanted to give the game a hat-tip.

“I have played cricket at the university level and have also done commentary in the Indian Premier League. I read and write a lot on cricket too. We thought this would be a cheeky tribute to the sport.”

Dialogue writer Vishal also gets his moment in the sun when his “poem” on Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel laureate and literary icon of Bengal, plays a key role in the season one finale of “Shekhar Home”.