She has a Maharashtrian father and a Haryanvi mother, loves missi roti and Lionel Messi and has lost some 21 kilos after her super duper debut in Dum Laga Ke Haisha. All this information I get in like five seconds after meeting her. Bhumi Pednekar is a real motormouth. Thanks to the success of DLKH she has become quite a pro at giving interviews and knows just what you’re going to ask before you fire the question. She’s witty, garrulous and totally in command of herself. In fact, you aren’t sure if you’re meeting the actor or her character, Sandhya Varma from the film. She says Sandhya was an extension of her own self. “Like Sandhya, I was never ashamed of my plus size. I was a confident person. It doesn’t matter what you are on the outside, it’s what you are from within that counts.”
In the film, Sandhya faces rejection in love due to her size. Bhumi, on the contrary, says she was always popular among boys. “Everyone faces rejection at some point. Everyone is a Sandhya somewhere. Not that my size prevented me from getting attention. Also whether you’re fat or thin, the way you see yourself, is the way you will be perceived by others.”
Physicality doesn’t matter to her when it comes to matters of the heart. “For me talent and ambition makes a person attractive. That’s something I dig in a person. I don’t have a set of physical parameters for my boyfriend. What’s more important is that we are likeminded people.”
Her character, Sandhya, is shown to be someone who shakes a leg whenever the music is turned on – whatever the occasion or place. Bhumi says she too was like that as a child. “My mother tells me the moment the song Tirchi topiwale from Tridev would play, I’d start jumping and dancing. So I had that keeda in me since a kid. I was one of those kids whose parents would make them dance at parties. I always wanted to be an actress but I was never vocal about it.”
She confides she secretly went through rounds of acting classes and workshops but never graduated to facing the camera. She did get a foot inside one of India’s most prestigious banners –Yash Raj Films but not as an actor. She worked there as a casting assistant under casting director Shanoo Sharma, grooming a battery of potential
stars but never letting anyone know of her secret passion.
he never even confided in her best friend and boss, Shanoo Sharma. “I used to tell Shanoo that I want to direct films. She was like ‘buddy, if you wanted to direct your film, your script would have been ready by now.’ I never auditioned in front of Shanoo. If she’d be around, I’d conduct them in a different room. One day, she saw me taking auditions and asked me why I am wasting my time taking auditions. She wanted me to become an actress. I thought she was just being nice.”
Then the casting for DLKH was on. “Adi sir (Aditya Chopra) and Maneesh Sharma have seen me over the years cuing actors. So they thought they should give me a chance.” One day she got a call from Shanoo that she had been selected for the film and coincidentally it was also Bhumi’s birthday. “Shanoo was hysterical on the phone, she passed on the news and for a minute I passed out due to happiness. Later, of course, we partied.”
DLKH was unusual from the other outings from the banner. While their other films have endorsed size-zero and bikini babes, DLKH went in the opposite direction. Bhumi had to gain some more weight for the role. “I gained more than 12 kilos for this role. I was so convinced about the script, that I was ready for the challenge. Being a foodie, you’re told to gain weight for a lead role for YRF. Only a fool would have said no. Also the film doesn’t make fun of an overweight person.”
She recollects how scared she was on her first day of shoot, “My director, Sharat Katariya, didn’t have any faith in me. He thought I was urban and not suited to play this small town girl in the ’90s. Ayushmann is also a Punjabi munda, so for Sharat we were misfits. Sharat wasn’t confident about me and rightly so. Why should he just come and flatter me with good words, if he is not happy with my work? Too many people were telling me many too many things since I was new. Then I thought let me do what I feel like. Then on it was cakewalk, pure euphoria and happiness.”
A certain Parineeti Chopra too had a similar graph in 2011, from working for YRF to being the banner’s poster girl. Is she the next Parineeti? “Firstly Parineeti has achieved so much in life. I don’t think I’m the next Parineeti. But being compared to her is a big compliment. I hope to make a path for myself. I admire women who have made space for themselves. Madhuri Dixit didn’t think ‘I will be the next Madhubala’. Similarly I don’t want to become ‘somebody’.”
Bhumi says she can lose more weight and become size zero to don a bikini if her role demands it. “If as Sandhya I can wear four layers of clothing in DLKH, I don’t see a big deal wearing a bikini.” She lost weight with a combination of cardio and watching her diet. Her dream of watching herself in Chandan cinema has been realised and her next dream is of romancing Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan on screen. She’s hush-hush about what her next projects would
be – one hears that she would be cast opposite Arjun Kapoor in YRF’s next. But given that she’s Yash Raj’s new success story, the sky literally is the limit for her... she’s broken several stereotypes and let’s hope she continues to make a difference in the near future…
3 things you need to know about
Karisma Kapoor fever
As a kid Bhumi was obsessed with Karisma Kapoor. When she was 12 years old, she went crazy about Raja Hindustani. She even got the red dress that Karisma wore in
the film.
Screen hopping
Though her dream was to watch DLKH in Chandan cinema, Bhumi has gone screen hopping after her film released. She has been to various single screen theatres to gauge audience’s reactions, savouring popcorn, samosas and bottle wali Thums Up.
Fast food fun
Bhumi didn’t have any specific diet to gain weight for the film. She binged on street food, Mac Donald’s burgers and KFC chicken.
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