On a sultry Mumbai afternoon with temperatures soaring, Sayani Gupta and I meet at the Starbucks in Khar. Coincidentally, it’s located in the same building as Shah Rukh Khan’s production house Red Chillies Entertainment’s office. She sits with folded legs on the chair and digs her fork into a tempting red velvet cheesecake while I sip on my frothy cold coffee. Two Bengalis from Kolkata under one roof are a riot. We're no different. After we've discussed everything from Howrah Bridge to maccher jhol, our conversation steers to her role as Shah Rukh Khan’s close aide in Maneesh Sharma’s Fan. And she tells me that the response to her role was splendid. “It was a difficult film to make and was special to all of us, especially Shah Rukh,” she says adding, “He has outdone himself. It takes guts to do such a film being a superstar.”
Her big-ticket film happened because of a Facebook message from Yash Raj Film’s casting director Shanoo Sharma, which she read two months late! “I had met Shanoo after she saw me in a play called Noises Off. She told me I had an interesting face. But that I could never be a typical Yash Raj heroine,” she recalls. However, she went for the auditions and as luck would have it she landed the role in Fan, just when she was leaving for the London premiere of her debut film, Shonali Bose’s Margarita With A Straw.
We both giggle like lovestruck schoolgirls the moment SRK becomes the topic of our conversation. “I’m not an emotional person. But I had tears in my eyes when I first met him,” she smiles. She says there’s a magnanimity about Shah Rukh that reflects not only in his films but even in his life. “He’s God’s chosen one. Even if he’s in a corner, people flock towards him because he’s so funny, warm and giving. He hugs every single person on the floor, including a lightman. He sits on the stairs and smokes just like one of us. He’s so cool,” she reveals.
According to her, SRK is the most technically sound actor. “He moves a lot while giving his shot but he never goes out of his focus mark. No one can challenge him in technicalities. He’s so sharp,” she smiles. As an actor she’s never troubled by rivalry or insecurities. Leena Yadav’s Parched had her team up with Radhika Apte, Surveen Chawla and Tannishtha Chatterjee. “When I signed it I had three scenes and in the end I had two. I did it because those two scenes were brilliant and people still remember them,”
she explains.
For Margarita..., they wanted a dusky actor to play Khanum, the blind girl, in contrast to Kalki’s fair complexion. Many were auditioned, some were even selected but they turned down the bold role. People cautioned her about the danger of being typecast but she went ahead with it. In order to play a visually challenged, homosexual girl, Sayani had to understand Khanum’s world first. She approached veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah for help. He showed her the exercises he had followed in order to prepare for his role in the acclaimed Sparsh.
Says Sayani, “I woke up with a blindfold and did my chores with it on. I watched Scent Of A Woman and Sparsh.” She learnt Braille, stayed at a blind women’s hostel in Andheri and learnt how to walk with a cane. She reveals that Aamir Khan was so impressed that he thought she was actually a blind girl. She laughs, “Rajkumar Hirani thought they’d used VFX for my eye movements in the movie. I had to act out in front of him to convince him it was all natural."
But she reveals the best compliment came at the South Asian Film Festival in Los Angeles post the screening of Margarita... “An old man walked up to me and said, ‘You were fantastic.’ When I thanked him he said, ‘I’m the editor of Scent Of A Woman Michael Tronick. Al Pacino was brilliant in the movie but after seeing your film, I believe you’ve outdone Al”, she beams with pride.
The Mumbai heat forces us to order another round of cold coffee. Swirling and playing with the straw she candidly admits to being hit on by a lot of women. Especially, while shooting in New York for Margarita... “I had to regularly go to New York’s gay bars and spend time to prepare for my role. I’ve never made love to a woman. I had to tell them I’m straight... I like men,” she laughs. She throws her head back and exclaims, “I like the penis!” Before I can bury my head into the table she takes the conversation to the lesbian scenes in the movie. She says, “When we were shooting the kissing scene in Margarita..., Kalki asked me, ‘Haven’t you kissed a girl before in school?’ She studied at a boarding school and it probably happens there. But for me it was the first time.” To make matters worse Kalki and she were behaving like sisters during the shoot much to the chagrin of director Shonali. She laughs, “Shonali kept saying, ‘No, you guys have to be sexually compatible!’”
She has just wrapped up the shooting for her next film, Nitya Mehra’s Baar Baar Dekho alongside Sidharth Malhotra and Katrina Kaif. Doing character roles doesn’t bother her. “Of course, I want to play the lead. But acchhe actors ko sirf character roles hi milte hai,” she jokes adding, “The protagonist’s world turns believable only when the supporting cast is solid.” But she believes there are some lead stars, who are exceptionally talented as well. “Like Deepika Padukone. She’s fantastic. Probably, she has gone through a catharsis… I couldn’t take my eyes off her in Piku. She’s so inspiring. She has realised that looking stunning is not enough.”
In Jagga Jasoos starring Katrina and Ranbir Kapoor, she’s playing a 14-year-old girl who’s the narrator. Even though she has shot for it, she reveals that the fate of the movie is a question mark. “I shot for four months but a lot has changed since then. Anurag is rewriting the script because he’s not sure of many things. Nobody knows if I’m in that movie anymore, including me,” she says guardedly. Reportedly, the Ranbir-Katrina breakup has created problems in the Jagga shoot. “I don’t know about the breakup because back when I was shooting with them they were absolutely in love. Ranbir is a great actor and human being. His mind works like a director. We have a similar approach to acting,” she says. She has worked with Katrina in both Jagga Jasoos and Baar Baar Dekho and claims to be friends with her. “She’s professional. On the set, she can’t see anything apart from work… it seems like she’s got blinkers on. Her hard work is inspiring. Kat is a boy, there’s nothing girly about her. I enjoy her dry sense of humour,” she shares.
Sayani has done two shorts recently - Anurag Kashyap’s sister Anubhuti Kashyap’s Call Waiting and Payal Sethi’s Leeches that is doing the rounds of foreign film festivals. But she insists theatre is her first love. She’s begun workshops for Rajat Kapoor’s play As You Like It.
As we chill in the cafe, she tells me her father was a musician who worked with All India Radio. “He was a real artiste. He also did theatre. My madness comes from there,” she smiles. Her mother worked for BSNL. “My parents had an age gap of 17 years between them. Dad was 42 when he got married. He didn’t want to have a child. But his best friend’s mother convinced him that this was the only way he could pass on his talent. That’s why my parents had me,” she chuckles. Her father passed away in 2009. Her mother believed Sayani would take to dance as she had trained in Bharatnatyam. “She didn’t want me to be an actor because she had seen dad rough it out,” she says.
After her graduation in Delhi, she landed up a well-paying sales and marketing job. “I got six promotions in one year and had six MBAs reporting to me. I was making money but the work was boring,” she grimaces. She didn’t want to hold regrets later, so she joined the FTII in Pune to find her calling.
And the adventure continues...
Loading Next Article...
SHOW COMMENTS