Erica Fernandes is one of the most loved stars of the TV industry. Right from her performance in Kuch Rang Pyaar ke Aise Bhi, to Kasautii Zindagii Kay, she has made her way straight to the hearts of the audience with her performance. However, it was not an easy journey for the actress to make it through the Hindi TV industry, especially since she did not know Hindi before!
In a recent interview with ETimes, the actress said learning Hindi was the biggest challenge when she has entered TV industry. She revealed, “My main problem was language. My challenge was speaking in Hindi because I have grown up speaking in English. My grammar goes for a toss, when it comes to Hindi.”
She also added, “At that point of time, when I was giving interviews for Kuch Rang, I would tell Shaheer that ‘I will speak in English’. I wanted him to translate it into Hindi. He said, ‘If you don’t speak to all of us in Hindi, you won’t learn’. Everyone told me to speak in Hindi even off-screen to improve the language. Only after doing my first show, I got fluent in Hindi. I had to do so many retakes only because of my Hindi. To top it all, I had to speak in Bengali, because my character was a Bengali. I had to mug up Hindi and Bengali. Then I got into the flow.”
Erica Fernandes had tried to work in the South industry as well. She opened up about being replaced because of her weight in a film and said, “The day I got replaced in my film, I was like ‘Didn’t they know that I am like this?’ I had put in a lot of effort to gain weight and I did gain a few kilos. The hero was also bulking up. From what I saw him to what he became on the day I was on set, I was like ‘what just happened!’ He bulked up even more. And compared to him, my efforts went down the drain, because my changes weren’t visible. That’s life. Things like that happened and it has only made me stronger. Many things happened, and if they didn’t happen, it wouldn’t have made me who I am today.”
