She is at the top of her game, and she is enjoying every bit of it. Deepika Padukone has found herself standing right at the top and is now in a position where she can merrily balance a Happy New Year and Bajirao Mastani with Finding Fanny and Piku. With Piku being her 20th Hindi film in an eventful career so far, Deepika is finding herself in the elite company of Amitabh Bachchan and Irrfan Khan. With the promise of a good performance in the Shoojit Sircar film where she is playing the central protagonist. Deepika sounds confident in this interview.
Is this a brand new, fresh and girl next door Deepika that we are going to see in Piku?
I think a little bit of it. It is also to do a little with the kind of film that I am doing and the character that I am playing. Shoojit was sure that he wanted Piku to be a character which is real and relatable. I think most importantly, I had to be a daughter in a way I am to my own parents. When Shoojit came home for the narration, I was in casual clothes. He said that this is the Piku he wanted for his film. In fact there were a lot of days when I went to the sets in my own clothes and my hair being roughly done up. Shoojit didn’t want me to change that. So Piku is what was written on paper and little bit of my own self.
I am sure this is one film where so many youngsters from small towns and cities could dream of finding a Piku around them.
Absolutely. It is also due to the kind of story that we are telling. See, Piku is a multi-tasker, she balances time between friends, family and work-life. She takes care of her father who is getting old. Now this is what we all go through at some point in our life. We have parents and we have to start taking care of them. The kind of situations that we go through in everyday life are so real that sometimes Mr. Bachchan and I forgot that we were shooting for the film.
So the realistic set up worked too?
Correct. In fact the house that we were shooting in was basically a set in Mumbai. Still, everything was so functional – right from the loo to the kitchen – that it all turned out to be an actual home space. So what Shoojit did was put a camera out there and just capture what we were doing. That’s what made it all realistic, yet entertaining and endearing.
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