Richa confessed that she felt “totally demolished” but had resolved to get it right.
Sharing that SLB wanted her to “live up to something” like Pakeezah, she said, “I think, he and I were doing a song for the first time.
The song per say is not just a song.
So he was kind of losing patience with me.”View this post on Instagram A post shared by Netflix India (@netflix_in)She also shared the sharp critique and feedback that Bhansali was giving her while directing her.
I’d say I was totally demolished but the next day I woke up with resolve that I’m going to do it.
Days after revealing that she had to give 99 takes for a dance sequence in Sanjay Leela Bhansali‘s Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, Richa Chadha has opened up what was her mental space like when the filmmaker was “losing patience” with her. Richa confessed that she felt “totally demolished” but had resolved to get it right.
Richa, describing her situation on set when she was struggling to get the shot right, told Galatta Plus, “He (SLB) is a master because he is a classically trained Odissi dancer, so he knows the taal, he knows the rhythm. I am trained in Kathak, which is a very different form. So, for that scene, I think he did a mixture of like Kubrick and Spielberg because he did 99 takes, he didn’t get it and he said ‘pack up’, and he left. Then, after a few days, he was like, ‘I am not happy with that take,’ and I was like, ‘I know, what do you want me to do?’ So he said, ‘let’s do it!’ and we canned it in 20 minutes.”
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Richa Chadha (@therichachadha)
When asked what was the exact thing that she was expected to do while performing and what were the directions given to her by Bhansali, Richa said that she was tasked with getting the dance steps, humiliation and the drunkenness, all in one go.
Sharing that SLB wanted her to “live up to something” like Pakeezah, she said, “I think, he and I were doing a song for the first time. The song per say is not just a song. The premise of that is very sacred to him. It’s like from Pakeezah being invited to her lover’s wedding to perform a mujra, which in itself is a very humiliating premise. So he was very like, ‘you got to live up to something,’ and he wanted… he is not just happy with the dance, he wants the drunkenness to come through, he wants the delusion to come through that she is dressed like a bride, he wants the Kathak, the footwork and everything to be perfect, but he wants a breakdown in real time and in a single round trolley shot where the camera is slowly zooming in. The thing is I give him full credit because he is a master. So, he definitely knows what he is doing, just that the standards are high.”
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Richa then shared why she was taking so long to get the shot right and how she even asked the crew to get her a quarter of gin so she can showcase her drunkenness while dancing. She shared, “For me, I’ll tell you, on that day, after take 20, which was normal, because I am not hitting the mark and he also put this big guldasta (bouquet) on my head, it is very heavy, so when I was turning, I was balancing and the roses were hitting me, the costume was very heavy. So when I’d spin I wouldn’t land on the mark. So he was kind of losing patience with me.”
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Netflix India (@netflix_in)
She also shared the sharp critique and feedback that Bhansali was giving her while directing her. She shared, “He was like ‘in this take, there is no drunkenness and in this take, the dance is not good, in this take, the eyebrow didn’t arch at this point of time’. So, there was always something. He is not from the school of thought that you can cut and shoot dance. He wants long takes. So I even thought that I wasn’t drunk so I called for a gin after 6 pm when there were only three hours left for the shift. I asked for a quarter of gin, wondering what if I’d need to get drunk for real. So there I am, the AD’s are giving me looks and I am slowly swinging it. I am like, ‘I am not used to alcohol, this is going to make me pee. I don’t know what I am going to do in this dress, I can’t even get out of it’. I just sucked it up and just didn’t move from there for those… I think it took 8 hours for the 99 takes to happen.”
Richa then confessed that not being able to get it right even after 99 takes “completely demolished” her. She said, “It is like complete annihilation of the ego is what I am going through at that point of time. I think in some way it is a good thing, not because I am a masochist. I’d say I was totally demolished but the next day I woke up with resolve that I’m going to do it. If people think I can’t do a lip-sync song they are so mistaken.”
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In an earlier chat with India Today, Bhansali had said that Richa was “actually crying” on set when she was giving these takes. “The anger on her face was so special. That moment was a result of what I said to her and what she said to me. In all the songs I’ve shot, big numbers, this is one of the rare moments of the actor feeling the humiliation of the scene that she went through rather than feeling the humiliation of me getting angry and saying, ‘How many takes will you want?’ The anger was from both sides, but you need to be in that state of mind. Another actor might have stormed off the set in anger, but Richa and I both understood that the shot is more important, the song is more important, the scene is more important, the series is more important than either of us,” he said.
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Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar also starring Manisha Koirala, Sharmin Segal, Aditi Rao Hydari, Shekhar Suman, Fardeen Khan among others is streaming on Netflix.
