In her decade-long career, Alia Bhatt has played a slew of strong, flawed characters, spent the last few years upping her reality quotient. One of Bollywood’s brightest, most glamorous of stars, the young actor doesn’t hesitate to strip away the sheen, be it talking about her choice of roles or bringing real stories to celluloid.
Bhatt is currently in the midst of city tours, telephonic interviews, reality show visits as she is promoting her upcoming film Gangubai Kathiwadi where she plays the titular character. Candid, self-aware and unafraid, the actor has come into her own, as she talks about working with Sanjay Leela Bhansali, playing a strong character which many feel she was unfit for and how fear and insecurity motivates her to do better.
You were meant to do Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film (Inshallah, co-starring Salman Khan) which was shelved suddenly for certain reasons days before it was going to go on floors. How much did the incident affect you?
One of the things in life I wasn’t prepared for was a film getting shelved. Even though I have heard that it happens often, I never thought it could happen to me and I could never imagine it could happen with a film of this scale. I was completely thrown off. At the same time, I also believe that certain things happen for a reason. But Sanjay sir was completely fine. He told me that you go for your vacation and come back, I have something for you. He is a man of his words and two weeks later he called me to his office and narrated to me the script of Gangubai Kathiawadi. In hindsight, I feel that had I done that film then maybe I wouldn’t get this part. And getting this experience with Sanjay sir one-on-one, in and as Gangubai Kathiawadi, was the juiciest dynamic any actor would ask for.
Even before the trailer came out, a lot of people doubted whether you were the right choice for the character and even felt that you were a misfit. Did these doubts just motivate you to give your best?
The audience has very limited information about this character. They feel that the film is about a 40 to 50-year-old woman. They are trying to portray her as a don and in people’s minds, a don is someone who is a middle-aged woman. But that is not the case in the film. So I wasn’t worried about that as I knew the story. Her journey starts when she is 16 years old. In that case, which actor today can play both a young girl and a middle-aged woman? That transition is what Sanjay sir was looking for.
People felt that my face is soft but a gruesome situation doesn’t have anything to do with a face. What was important and certain is that if I don’t play the part with conviction and if I held back with the flair and the emotions, then it would have backfired. So, I personally had to go all out and believe that I was this person. I would always come back home and often say that the film is either going to be a comedy or it is going to work really well and shock the audience. And in both cases, one has to take that leap of faith and try. Even though I doubted my capability in the beginning, Sanjay sir had a belief in his vision and in me which was more than enough for me.
You mentioned taking the leap. Does this ability to take risks come from the fact that you have been in the industry for a decade and have had a fairly successful career so far?
I don’t fear making mistakes. It is something that I feel is a part and parcel of life. I can’t always make the right decisions. Sometimes in the fear of making a mistake, you don’t go ahead and take the chance and later say ‘what if.’ I don’t want to be a bunch of ‘what if’s.’ I am totally capable of a decision going wrong. And yes, you rightfully said that the confidence comes from the decisions that you took in the past and it went well. So when I did a film like Raazi there was a belief in me that it can not only be a good film but also a commercial success. And somewhere my instinct was right and it was a big learning for me.
Is going deep into the character something that you enjoy?
Yes, I do. It is one of the things that I enjoy as an actor. I am able to literally live a completely different life. For a person like me who is constantly restless and monotony is very difficult for me (laughs), I can’t do the same thing again and again. I enjoy being in front of the camera where I can switch off who I am and become another person. I do it out of enjoyment. I consider acting like a superpower. Getting into the skin of the character is not technical or craft-driven, it is also a lot of fun to become a new person and live a different life.
But how do you constantly do it for almost two years? How do you balance out a character with your own artistic sensibilities?
The whole process of switching off and switching on is something that I do every day. I am acting only in front of the camera. I am not someone who goes method for any film. When the stakes are high, you have to just do it. Unfortunately, we had delays due to the pandemic. It is a huge film and due to the pandemic, we have all the more reasons to get the audience back to theaters. I don’t think for any of the films that I have done in my career I ever had a choice to just relax and sit back on the sets. Working on Gangubai Kathiawadi was everything that I expected and more. It was a magical experience.
Does fear and insecurity of pulling off a character really drive you?
Doubt is the key to knowledge and the fact that I doubted my capability of pulling off a character like Gangubai only made me, like you rightfully said, push harder to discover that there is a way and no impossibility of pulling it off. I cannot say it’s not possible because the limitation was only in my brain. So this fear gave me the initial push and zest and once you are on the sets, you forget all the insecurities, and then you are just playing the part.
Then where does the vision of Sanjay Leela Bhansali come in?
Sanjay sir is someone who doesn’t make films because he needs to get them done in a certain number of days – that’s why he’s known for making films for a long time – he wants to flesh out every moment in every scene. He talks to actors about his experience where somewhere he plants it in actors’ brains. He gives the actor so much room to create, to discover. If I’m not getting a scene, he’ll give me an hour to get it right. For the two years that we shot the film, I was in a world of my own. I don’t think there’s any director I’ve worked with who cares so much about me doing my best. The toughest thing was the dichotomy in the character. People are saying that the dialogues are powerful and hard-hitting. Right? But sir t6old me was that the dialogue had to be hard-hitting but the eyes were to be vulnerable. That pain to be there in the eyes but the style to be in the body language. So it was the contrast of the two that I found difficult.
I am assuming your family has seen the film, what has been the reaction from them?
I wouldn’t want to speak on behalf of them because I feel like it is like blowing my own trumpet. But I can say for sure that no one has told me that they haven’t like the film (Smiles).
