Karisma Kapoor gets a striking makeover in director Abhinay Deo’s upcoming ZEE5 show, Brown. Playing the troubled investigator, Rita Brown, Karisma takes on a role fraught with complexity as she channels the character’s innate anger and frustration through her bluish green eyes. Set in the gritty bylanes, bureaucratic indoors and chirpy media houses of Kolkata, the show features a visual landscape that is new for Karisma, who sheds her popular image of a romance lead from the 90s.“I had said no to the series, like I normally do to most of the work that comes my way,” reveals Karisma. Abhinay gives some insight into why the actor might have said no to the show. “While introducing her character, I told Karisma that Rita Brown is a chain smoker and an alcoholic, who just wakes up and goes to her job like it’s a huge burden. I told Karisma that she shouldn’t do much makeup and set her hair. Maybe I was a bit too explicit in pitching the show,” smiles Abhinay.Karisma adds, “No, I think that was the challenge. Because I don’t do things that Rita does. I am not a drinker or a smoker. People see me in a different light, and this was stripped of everything possible. That was the beauty of it,” says Karisma.That’s what excited her on set every day in extremely hot conditions when they were shooting in Kolkata in June. “First, we were trying to deal with the heat, but then Abhinay came to me one day and said, ‘Make the sweat your character’. So, there were no touch-ups or anything. I would just crush my shirt further and give my shot,” says Karisma.Brown is adapted from the book ‘City of Death’ by Abheek Barua, and Karisma read it before the shoot. Her co-star, Jisshu Sengupta, however, felt that reading the script was enough. The Bengali actor plays a psychiatrist in the show, helping Rita make sense of the case and her emotions. As a creative person, Jisshu says he learns more from lived-in experiences than from reading a book.“I am not saying that reading is bad, and it’s not that I don’t read at all. If something interests me, I might. I have acted in many biopics, but I have never read those biographies. Reading is secondary for me, but it’s the experiences and environment that are important. I learn from people around me,” says Jisshu.