This is a huge misconception that men are brutes while women are not. Many many examples of women being ruthless. Throughout history. Need I quote examples?
Sorry but a man cannot be excused simply because of men will be men stuff.
Raima?
She is a B herself. Calling Sakshi a monster cannot buy sympathy for her or cover her crimes.
Raima fuelled this so called monster too, rode on her hoping to get tapes from her. Why did she hang like a tail to her? Praised her? Fanned her ego?
It is not easy to play devil. I see you run down Simone by either saying it was already a meaty role or by saying playing devil is easy.
Sorry. But aspects of acting like voice modulation, expressions, body language, pronunciation, dialogue delivery, emoting, posture, use of eyes constitute how well or poorly played a role is. Simone excels here. And to think she was earlier perceived miscast for this role (I had thought what will she do when I had seen the EHT promo in March).
An ordinary human is not this ruthless. Not this daring to take huge risk even if he or she wants. It's not like such roles come easily or like second nature.
It requires hardwork to get in skin of such a character.
Sakshi gloats about defending her son as a mother. She has often scolded Shaurya over having to clean mess he makes. She slapped him. She openly said she was let down by him. When has she prided over covering up rape of another woman? She had cried often wondering if she would ever see an improved Shaurya or die covering up his crimes.
It was Rajnath who was laughing over Shaurya using women and when he scolded Shaurya he scolded him for not committing crime in foolproof manner! 😲
Sakshi's only problem is that she admits Shaurya is her weakness and thinks as a mother she just has to save him, clean up after him no matter what. She gives in to that weakness and lets Shaurya take advantage.
She has totally misguided sense of love for progeny.
She wouldn't even have bumped off Raima if she did not feel she was losing her kids also to her. That triggered her more than a straying husband. She is insanely possessive of her kids.
The conditions in which Sakshi grew up, produce mostly deviants unless one gets rescued by good samaritans or by chance comes in contact with good company. Not that I am defending her but others had better background than her, why did they stray?
If others don't match up then it is their problem or shortcoming.
The Goenkas and their allies all deserve worst punishment and none are better or sympathy worthy.
On Simone, even her co stars have called her the best, and biggest success of EHT (I am quoting exact phrases from their video interviews and tweets, not writing my own words). She is winning all polls, awards and praise from fellow actors, gets even non TV watchers talking on Twitter also. That speaks for itself. All this without promoting herself online or elsewhere and neither doing any PR.