Sara Ali Khan oozes spontaneity. In fact, this is one of the many reasons she was cast to play rebellious Rinku Suryavanshi in her upcoming film Atrangi Re, touted to be a crazy love triangle with two male leads – Dhanush and Akshay Kumar (in an extended cameo). Tell her that she is being compared to both, her mother Amrita Singh and Kareena Kapoor Khan in her (first solo) song Chaka Chak from the film, and pat comes her response, “My father’s dream! (laughs). Comparisons will always happen because I look like my mother.”
She furthers, “My character in Atrangi Re demanded a lot of spontaneity which I am in real life. I am not a Bihari girl (as shown in the film) nor do I throw bottles (as seen in the trailer) at people. I don’t either believe that you should have two people at the same time in your life, so I won’t say I am exactly like Rinku. But both have a confident and assertive personality that sometimes camouflages a very sensitive interior and I think more than my spontaneity it was these qualities that probably landed me the role. The way that our confidence can sometimes mask our fears is something that Aanand Sir (L Rai, Director) saw in me. I remember Aanand Sir coming to me at a screening and saying, ‘I have something for you'. I heard just one line and I was in.” The film premieres on Disney + Hotstar on 24 December.
While prepping for the role required learning the dialect and body language, the major chunk was impromptu, says Khan. “There was costume trail, dialect training, I learned my lines but all that was just two per cent of the training, the rest 98 per cent was on live location, understanding the director’s brief, understanding the character’s state of mind and going there and doing just what he is asking me to do,” she says.
If Khan was lauded for her performance in her debut Kedarnath, the criticism that came with her third release Love Aaj Kal shook her confidence; the film’s failure had impacted her a lot. But soon after, she gathered herself and set out for Atrangi Re which she says is a very special film for her after Kedarnath.
“After Kedarnath and Simmba releasing back to back there was a certain expectation from me and I apologise that I have not been able to deliver in my third and fourth film (Coolie No 1). I am cognizant of that, I realise that. So after Kedarnath there was dealing of success that I had to go through and after Love Aaj Kal there was dealing of failure that I had to go through. It is all part and parcel of life,” she says.
She continues, “I started shooting for Atrangi just a week or 10 days after Love Aaj Kal was declared a flop. I think how you deal with your failure immediately is very important. This film matters to me the most because I get to play Aanand L Rai’s leading heroine and I know now after having watched the film, having done his film, and having done other films what the value and what the importance of this film in my life is. I also know that Aanandji on a personal level uplifted me and gave me love and confidence at a time that I lost it for my own self.”
Atrangi Re went on floors in Varanasi last March, but the shoot was halted when the coronavirus-induced nationwide lockdown was announced. This was obviously heart-breaking for Khan and the team but there was a sense of relief as they managed to complete the Varanasi schedule. “In fact, in 2020 the only thing that brought happiness in my life was Atrangi Re. It came to me at that moment when I most needed it. Lockdown was hard for sure but there was this sense of satiation because had lockdown happened right after Love Aaj Kal I would have been very restless. Fortunately, it happened after we finished our Benares schedule. We also shot for two extra days and put one song since the location was so beautiful. We had lots of fun shooting there and that gave me enough fuel to sustain me and just when the lockdown was getting bearable Aanand Sir took me to Madurai and made me shoot the song Chaka Chak. Every time I think about it I get goosebumps that every schedule of Atrangi Re came at a time when I needed it more than anything else. Mom used to tell me from her own experience and because she has gone through her own fair share of hardships in life that when she most needed her job it was there for her and I never really understood what she meant but now at a very early stage in my life I have understood what she meant,” says Khan.
Khan says her experiences so far have not only taught her dealing with success and failure but it has also taught her important lessons of life. “Films are a very important part of you but it is not only you. It is very important to know that after winning debut awards for Kedarnath, after having the most viewed song called Aankh Maare from Simmba in your kitty, or having a flop like Love Aaj Kal you are still coming to the same mother, having the same coffee and having the same dal chawal, you have to appreciate that,” she says.
And the five-film-old Khan seems to have become wise in understanding the ways of the industry. “The industry is going to look at me differently every Friday. I have understood that early in my life. The way I was looked at before Kedarnath, after Simmba, and after Love Aaj Kal has been very different. The way I look at the industry is I found a home, I found a place that I want to be in for the rest of my life so now I better buckle up and do good work. I got it easy as we all know but I have to really work hard to stay here,” she says.
Khan describes her co-stars – Akshay Kumar and Dhanush as Thalaiva of the North and South respectively. “Working with both of them was phenomenal. Akshay sir comes with so much experience and so much energy, he electrifies the whole set with the energy that he has. He has such screen personality, such screen presence, it is amazing to just be able to share screen space with him. Dhanush is inspirational, he is an institution in acting. He is a National award winner, he is so good at what he does and it was such a privilege to give him cues or take cues from him and learn from him,” she says.
Though nothing much has changed in selecting stories and subjects, Khan says that the pandemic has brought a kind of “thehrav” in her life. “The past 20 months have taught me how to truly slow down and value the moment. I have always been a high-energy girl combined with the fact that I studied in New York and I am a coffee drinker… It means that I am already with the third interviewer …that is the kind of person I was but today I am fully with you right now and that has changed in the last 20 months. I am not thinking about my next interview, I am not thinking about an award function I am attending tonight, I am not thinking about dinner the day after…I am fully here. Living in the moment and appreciating what you have instead of obsessing over what you cannot control is what the pandemic has taught me and this is also applicable to our job which is staying truly honest to that moment between action and cut,” says Khan.
Khan has been part of some blockbuster songs like Aankh Marey' from Simmba, and Mirchi Lagi Toh from Coolie No. 1 but Atrangi Re has given her the first solo song that she has always dreamt of. “We had a blast shooting it. I messaged Ranveer and Varun saying, ‘Really missed you guys but this one is just me, finally just mine. They were like, ‘Arre yaar tune bahut accha kiya hai...’ They both love me a lot, they are a bit biased to me. One has grown up watching solo heroine songs but these days we rarely have solo songs for female leads. After the lockdown, the first thing we did was go to Madurai and shoot this song. The energy I had in this was probably the pent-up energy that I had because of six months of incarceration that the lockdown gave me."
The film will be Khan’s second release on OTT after Coolie No 1 that premiered on Amazon Prime last Christmas. While the actress expresses disappointment in missing out on a big screen theatrical experience, she does understand the importance of the new medium. “Of course, there is disappointment [that the film is being released on OTT]. I became an actor when I didn’t even think there would be a time when theatres would shut down. But I now realise more than ever that content is truly king even beyond the medium that it is received on. If it is a good film you like it. Shershaah and Mimi are good examples of this. You will get appreciated if you deserve it. The world has really changed. I don’t think the platform matters as much as we would initially think it does. As long as you are telling good stories the medium is not as relevant,” she says as she hurriedly adds, “There may not be box office stress but we can’t escape the Friday stress...review stress is no less. Audience and media are both equally important and I am equally worried about both.”
Khan says that she will soon announce her next film which has already gone on the floor and going further, she would like to work with good directors, “because of the kind of directors I have been privileged to work with I have realised that you don’t choose them, they choose you,” she says. “My thought process is very clear while selecting scripts. I want to do different kinds of films, I want to do content-based films. My aim is to do such films that good directors would want to work with me and audiences would want to watch, where they watch and how they watch is not that important. But as long as they want to watch me I am happy,” she concludes.
Seema Sinha is a Mumbai-based mainstream entertainment journalist who has been covering Bollywood and television industry for over two decades. Her forte is candid tell-all interviews, news reporting and newsbreaks, investigative journalism and more. She believes in dismissing what is gossipy, casual, frivolous and fluff.
from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/3e8MGpB
No comments:
Post a Comment