Alia Bhatt has co-produced Darlings along with Shah Rukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment. She plays the lead in it along with Vijay Varma who plays her husband and Shefali Shah who plays her mother. Alia launched her banner Eternal Sunshine under which she has produced this dark comedy directed by debutant Jasmeet K Reen. Speaking to NDTV, Alia Bhatt spoke about the reason why she turned producer for the first time for Darlings, "It was on my mind, maybe it's a nice time for me to start producing the films in which I play like an important character or maybe it's nice to me to start looking at stories a little differently, I don't know. It all worked out. When I heard the narration of Darlings, it was such a surprising film, I was taken in by how the genre just shifted very, very quickly was a very unique story. And it just naturally happened, where I was like, Okay if I want to act in it, I also want to produce it. And I kind of suggested that Gaurav Verma from Red Chillies Entertainment. He brought me the script and actually he was very supportive of that. He said, of course, we must do this together, and it will be great. And yeah, that's how it happened."
To be clear, Darlings is the reason Alia Bhatt's production company came into being: "So first came Darlings, and then came my production, Eternal Sunshine. So Darlings is very, very special to me because of that because it was the kind of story that made me feel like okay, do I want to be a Creative Producer telling these kinds of stories?"
Alia Bhatt also explained what exactly she does when she is wearing the producer's hat. "See, I'm someone who's very, very attached to my films. Anyway, I get very involved, but I didn't know that this is the level of involvement one can have with regards to a movie when you're not just an actor, because of course, when we were making the film I was just an actor coming on the set doing my job going home. Because it was the first time that I'm creatively producing the film, I could very unabashedly speak very vocally, which I anyway do, this was a little bit more because I was more involved like from a position point and just need to be receptive to that which is great because we had lovely collaborative energy. Earlier I was never involved beyond my acting, I would give my feedback and then you know, switch off as an actor but now I do can't switch off I do tell them to do this or that, you know, I give inputs on everything and I enjoy it because it's like, okay, I'm learning for it."
Darlings, starring Alia Bhatt, Shefali Shah, Vijay Varma and Roshan Mathew, drops on Netflix on August 5.
