Yogita Bihani on working with Salman Khan, Anurag Kashyap and more

After graduating from Delhi University in computer science, Yogita Bihani took the corporate route to middle-class happiness. After working for an year in Delhi, she moved to Mumbai for better prospects. Her foray into the world of glamour happened in 2018, when she shot an ad for Dus Ka Dum with Salman Khan. Ekta Kapoor reportedly noticed her and offered her a role in the serial Dil Hi Toh Hai (2018), which turned her into a household name. She considers Salman her lucky mascot as thanks to the ad she got instant exposure. Talking about the experience she says, “Shooting with Salman sir was a magical experience. The minute he would enter the set it would light up, his aura would take over. At first I was nervous but then it only got better, he made me feel extremely comfortable.”

She wasn’t just a computer geek in college but took active part in theatre as well. That helped her while she was churning out episodes after episodes of her debut serial. She played a mother at just 23 during the second season last year and relied on her theatre training to pull through. “I’ve no experience with kids except for the interaction I’ve had with my nephews and nieces.” My instructors in theatre told me that as an actor it’s my job to do any role I get with conviction and remembering that I just went with the flow,” she muses. She maintains that pursuing acting wasn’t her dream growing up or even a long-term goal initially. However once she was into it, she started liking the process of being an actor. And the more she delved in it, the more she liked what she was doing. She decided to push her limits and liked the outcome. “I decided I should continue to put my best and perfect my art, with every character I played, as an artiste it added more to my calibre and since then there has been no looking back,” asserts the actress.

Yogita was recently seen in Vikramaditya Motwane’s Netflix original AK v/s AK where she played the character of a cinematographer who’s also Anurag Kashyap’s assistant and who has to endure a lot because of Kashyap’s maverick ways in the film. Yogita enjoyed the complexities that came with the role “My experience of working with Anurag sir has been extremely enriching. As you know I was not only acting in the movie but I was also shooting the movie he was making in the film. He had full faith in me and he knew with a bit of camera training I would be able to live up to his expectation. At first I wasn’t sure if I would be able to manage such a huge camera while legends like Anil Kapoor were in front of it. You don’t want to mess anything up,” she confesses. Her day of reckoning came when they were shooting an eight minute long take. She was in tears as she thought she wouldn’t be able to do it. That’s when Kashyap calmed her down and told her he had every confidence in her ability. “I actually managed to finish the shot perfectly. It was a scene where glass was to be crushed and we only had one sheet. Thankfully, I managed to capture that without any mistake.  It was a day where I conquered my fear,” she reflects.

While Anurag Kashyap and director Vikramaditya Motwane had faith in her, it was Anil Kapoor who felt she was ill-suited for the role and felt she wouldn’t be able to do justice to the twin responsibilities. She was unfrazzled by this lack of trust from the senior actor and went about her work quietly. It took time but Anil did come to appreciate her later on. “One day he told me that he was talking about my work with his daughter Rhea and son Harshwardhan. That made my day, I felt extremely happy. On the sets Anil sir is extremely professional, very warm, always full of new ideas and suggestions,” she gushes.

The starlet is buzzing with enthusiasm post the critical success of the film and wishes to work with the likes of Imtiaz Ali, Zoya Akhtar and Sriram Raghavan. Though she wants her next stop to be Bollywood after trying her hand at television and the digital space, she’s wise enough to know a meaty role trumps the medium. She says as an actor she’s open to everything from films, TV to digital space. “As an artiste the character I play is more important for me than the platform. If I’m good it’ll be appreciated irrespective of the medium. “The more work you do, the better you become. My only worry is that I shouldn’t be typecast. Barring that, I’m open to anything and everything.”