Deepika Padukone, Ananya Panday and Shakun Batra talk about Gehraiyaan
Much has been made about Deepika Padukone taking two days to respond to filmmaker Shakun Batra after he approached her with the script of Gehraiyaan, in which the actress plays the lead. That was the longest two days of the director's life; he told NDTV that he was convinced Deepika "hated" his script and that was the last he was going to see of her. Not at all, as it turns out - Deepika was following her own self-imposed protocol - of mulling over new project ideas for a couple of days - and it is one that she has based on a learning from her father, badminton legend Prakash Padukone.
Speaking to NDTV, Deepika Padukone said, "You can ask any filmmaker or writer who has come to me with their story. I have this disclaimer right at the start that you are not going to get an instant reaction from me. I do take a couple of days to just live with it." Her process is founded on a lesson learned from her famous parent. "My instinct could be a 'yes' or a 'no' but either way I have developed this process of not reacting there and then or making a decision at the spur of the moment," Deepika told NDTV, "This is something I have learned from my father, he has taught me never to be impulsive. That's just my process of living with it if it's a story I have not liked. I want to see if I have the same reaction after two to three days. Is there something I am missing?"
Disclaimer or no disclaimer, Shakun Batra was unnerved by his prospective lead's complete and utter silence. "As Karan Johar said at the trailer launch that I am a nervous person and I panic very easily. I thought she hated it and she has switched off her phone and she is never going to see me again," he told NDTV.
Shakun Batra could have spared himself those anxious few days because eventually, Deepika Padukone said yes and will soon be seen as Alisha in Gehraiyaan, a film on relationships and infidelity.
As Bollywood's leading actress Deepika Padukone chooses her films wisely so that each project is more than simply a professional commitment. "I feel your career is those choices you make, so it was the same with Gehraiyaan. I loved it, it was one of those rare narrations where (Shakun) had come prepared with background music for me to visualize what it was going to be. He did everything he could on his part, but I needed that time and maybe he was not ready for that. It was also a big emotional commitment. A lot of times there is this fear that as an audience I would love to watch this film but as an actor I am scared, I was thinking how do I deliver this. There are a lot of thoughts going through your mind," Deepika told NDTV.
Deepika's character in Gehraiyaan, Alisha, is a woman on the verge, struggling for equilibrium with her partner of six years and with whom she has settled into an unsatisfactory state of routine domesticity. Her life is upended when she falls for her cousin's fiancé and embarks on the troubled waters of an illicit romance. The other participants - one willing, two unwitting - in this love quadrilateral are played by Ananya Panday (Alisha's cousin Tia), Siddhant Chaturvedi (Tia's fiancé Zain, who returns Alisha's affection as fiercely) and Dhairya Karwa as Alisha's partner Karan.
Gehraiyaan also stars Naseeruddin Shah and Rajat Kapoor. It drops on Amazon Prime Video on February 11.
