Bollywood actress Neha Dhupia is garnering praises for her intense role in Behzad Khambata’s latest film ‘A Thursday,’ in which she plays the role of a strong-headed pregnant cop trying to trace an intelligent playschool teacher, Naina Jaiswal (Yami Gautam) who takes 16 toddlers in a school hostage one day.
Interestingly, when Neha was finalised for the role of ACP Catherine Alvarez, she was not expecting a baby, but by the time the film went on floors, she got pregnant with her son.
“Behzad instantly thought that I would be great for this part and I also instantly thought I would want to work with this director so that chemistry fell into place,” Neha told us. “And then, of course, hearing Yami playing such an interesting role, it kind of all fell into place till the point that I was in a place when I was not pregnant when I was cast for the part and then 7 months later I met Behzad because it was a lockdown and we couldn’t shoot, it was the second wave and I was pregnant and I told him, ‘Behzad this is what it is. What do you want to do?’ He didn’t even bat an eyelid.”
Neha lauds Behzad and producer Ronnie Screwvala for unflinchingly backing her. “You need changemakers like these,” Neha added. “One is as women, as moms, or as pregnant women, we want to get back to work and the other is the one creating these opportunities, so I tip my hat to all of them (Behzad and Ronnie).”
Talking about her apprehensions while filming action sequences during pregnancy, Neha said, “I would call my gynecologist and ask her, ‘Are the sound vibrations of gunshots going to trouble my son? I obviously didn’t know what I was having at the time but I told her that my baby is in my womb and she was like, ‘No, don’t worry. You can go ahead and do what you want.’ You need to have a brave physician too who sends you to work when you are eight months pregnant.”
Did anything surprise her about herself as an actor after working on ‘A Thursday’? The actress said, “The one thing that surprised me was now when I go back to set nothing seems hard. Initially, shooting in the rain was hard or like there was discomfort. There are a lot of things that look very pretty and glamourous but it’s not, but here I am the person who has been through like 7 am call time, so I wake up at 5 with morning sickness, to have hunger pangs to having fake contractions or so many other things that bother me, or like shooting in the rain when I was 8 months pregnant. So now when I am on the set and when I see little glitches or little things that bother me, now in my head I feel like it was a great sort of training ground, so that very little bothers me now.”
A Thursday, also featuring Dimple Kapadia, Atul Kulkarni, and Maya Sarao in pivotal roles, is now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar.
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