Archana Puran Singh recalls response to Parmeet Sethi’s proposal: ‘Will never enter kitchen’ | Bollywood News

Archana Puran Singh’s debut television show Mr Ya Mrs (1987) on Doordarshan, directed Jalal Agha, revolved around a working woman and her house husband (Jayant Kripalani). Little did she know that it would mirror her marriage in the initial years with fellow actor Parmeet Sethi, whom she met the very next year and tied the knot with in 1992. Since she was the more experienced actor, and Parmeet was still struggling to find his footing in the industry, Archana became the primary bread-earner, much like her character in Mr Ya Mrs.
Archana on response to Parmeet’s proposal
“I never connected that! You’re connecting it,” she tells SCREEN in an exclusive interview, laughing. However, she does admit that her rather curt response to Parmeet’s marriage proposal made it to his directorial debut, the 2010 he comedy Badmaash Company. The Shahid Kapoor and Anushka Sharma-starrer released 18 years after they got married.
“Parmeet wrote Badmaash Company. When Shahid proposed to Anushka, she gave the same line, ‘I’ll never enter the kitchen and no wet towels on the bed.’ That was my line,” reveals Archana. “I still don’t go into the kitchen,” she added, with her signature guffaw intact. Her unbending will to not cook has been made quite evident in the vlogs she does with her family — Parmeet and their two sons Aaryamann and Ayushmaan Sethi.
A still from Badmaash Company.
Archana on her debut show
Archana Puran Singh may be a comedy veteran now, but she vividly recalls how she kept getting her first-ever comedy shot wrong back in 1987 while filming Mr Ya Mrs. “My first shot on my first day was to stir a kadhai. Jalal asked me to make it funny. Today, I can find a hundred ways to make it funny, like the back of my hand. That time, I had no clue,” she confesses.
“I made some faces because that’s what I assumed what comedy is. Jalal said, ‘Cut! Comedy is not about making faces, Archie!’ I felt so bad. He yelled at me. And whatever little I could manage to do, I couldn’t even do that anymore,” she recounts. “That sentence has stayed with me. I learnt comedy on the job. Every day on the set, I realized what makes something funny and unfunny. And I kept learning. But my first day was very bad,” she admits.
Archana on her new innings
While she started her career doing comic roles, those began to evaporate once she began appearing on Kapil Sharma’s shows — Comedy Nights with Kapil, The Kapil Sharma Show, and most recently, The Great Indian Kapil Show on Netflix India, where she appears alongside Navjot Singh Siddhu. Reduced to a stock figure who has to laugh loudly and serve as the butt of several Kapil jokes, she didn’t get any film or show offers even after memorable roles in hits like Rohit Shetty’s 2012 action comedy Bol Bachchan.
However, 2026 seems to be a different story. After making her presence felt as the delectably unpredictable chief antagon in Rajkummar Rao and Sanya Malhotra-starrer black comedy thriller Toaster on Netflix India earlier this year, Archana will be next seen as a manipulative and authoritative government officer in Biswapati Sarkar’s campus comedy show Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya, which will drop on Prime Video India this Friday on July 24.Story continues below this ad
Archana Puran Singh as Urmila in Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya.
The chemry and gradually unravelling equation of her character Urmila with Kay Kay Menon’s protagon Gyaneshwar is fairly intriguing. “It’s all written in the script. Now that you ask me, I wonder, ‘Hain? Chemry thi?’ When we were shooting, I didn’t realize we created any chemry. We just came and did our best as Gyaneshwar and Urmila respectively,” says Archana. “Himak Gaur (director), who was on the monitor, said, ‘Can you explore this zone a little more?’ We just followed that collaboratively and creatively, and it just came together,” she adds.
Even almost 28 years after Karan Johar’s 1998 blockbuster romantic comedy Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Archana is synonymous with the sophicated English Literature teacher Ms. Breganza. So much so that she even reprised that role, now elevated to Mrs. Breganza-Malhotra after presumably getting married to Anupam Kher’s headmaster Mr. Malhotra, in Shauna Gautam’s Netflix India rom-com Nadaaniyaan last year. But does she wonder what would happen if Ms. Breganza lands in a hopeless government school like Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya? “She’d be like, ‘Oh, what is this? Is this even a school? What is Adarsh, what is Baal, what is Vidyalaya?,” responds the actor, invoking the Ms. Breganza within.
Anupam Kher as Mr Malhotra and Archana Puran Singh as Ms Breganza in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.
Archana’s early career
However, Archana is glad that she’s already achieved a name for herself in the film industry, which is getting increasingly saturated and competitive today. “Maybe I’d have been thrown out of the industry if I started today,” she claims, adding, “We didn’t know how to give auditions at all. We were lucky in some ways, and unlucky in others. Today, there’s a system where you can approach the director. Back then, there were just 10-20 filmmakers. You can’t just show up at their home, right?”
She recalled getting a call from veteran filmmaker Subhash Ghai for a cameo in his 1991 action drama Saudagar. Since Ghai was at the peak of his career after the blockbuster success of his 1989 action film Ram Lakhan, Archana assumed someone was pulling a prank on her. So, she banged the phone on him once, and changed her voice when he called again. “When he actually cast me, he asked me, ‘Ye buddha sa aadmi kaun hai tumhare ghar pe?’ How do I tell him that ‘buddha sa aadmi’ was me only?,” she says, laughing.Story continues below this ad
Archana Puran Singh and Rakesh Bedi in Shriman Shrimati.
She believes that the arrival of casting agents have made the industry much more streamlined. “It’s a great change that there’s a system today. The new actors are lucky in that sense, but they’re also unlucky because there’s so much competition today that it’s very difficult to make a name and place for yourself. So, kudos to these young guys and girls! New talent is getting discovered in the process,” argues Archana.
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“We’ve done such bad work and some small roles. These guys are lucky they can choose. We didn’t have a choice. Just accept what’s coming your way. If you say no, how would you pay for the next month?,” she adds. However, Archana agrees that like it did for veteran actor Ratna Pathak Shah, comedy also “saved” her. “We’ve got such great roles in comedy. I have no regrets. I’m very, very grateful. I did so many shows like Mr Ya Mrs and Shriman Shrimati. That’s what’s elongated and prolonged my career to 40 years,” she says.