Bollywood actress Richa Chadha explores life of controversial star Shakeela

Gulf News

She didn’t plan it this way, but Indian actress Richa Chadha has inadvertently invited attention to her new film ‘Shakeela’, out in UAE cinemas on December 24.  The biopic about a South Indian adult film star enjoys the distinction of being the first Indian movie to get a wide release in the country after the start of the pandemic. The movie will release in India over 1,000 cinema screens in five languages including Hindi.  Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/34ytFZc   Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km  #RichaChadha #Bollywood #Shakeela

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00:00it is what it is and there's no denying of it also if you've seen the trailer she says

00:05this is just a job for me I have to do it for my family and I don't force people to come and watch my film

00:12how do you humanize a character that is mostly standard and object to titillate you know can

00:18you humanize it is it possible see there are two ways you can tell a story like this you can either

00:22go the very art house way and make like make a beautiful festival film which travels and wins

00:29awards or or you can make a very pulpy commercial film which is almost like the films that she used

00:35to do and using those talk about her personal struggle her personal life whatever it was like

00:44how her family forced her to do all of this how she wanted love in her life how her

00:51superstardom was something that she hadn't worked on the whole quest is to humanize

00:57this character and save her from the kind of judgment that I think she's been living with for

01:02the past few decades you did not try to put on weight and try to become her you know there's no

01:06physical generally biopics the first thing the actors generally tend to do I feel is be as close

01:12to the subject as possible I did put on weight for the you'll see in the trailer put on lots of

01:18weight on my belly of course it wasn't possible for me given my work commitments to put on as much

01:24as to actually become her size I didn't want to get trapped into that look she's just put on

01:32weight or she's because then the focus tends to be only on that like physical transformations and

01:38things like that so in this case I wanted to be as close and as raw as possible I focused on

01:48being able to be true to her story generally Bollywood biopics exactly they try to glorify

01:54the subject they try to gloss over their drug addictions and everything I guess it's just one

01:59of the pitfalls we seem to be suffering with this was there a temptation to make her more perhaps

02:04just you know what is it called watered down things diluted make it more palatable for the

02:09viewers so that she doesn't come across to you know so that everybody know there's no yeah no

02:15no no there's no whitewashing here again I want to tell you that it's a very commercial film so

02:21like don't go into it expecting yeah I mean it's a very commercial film but having said that

02:28there's no attempt to whitewash her it is what it is and there's no denying of it also if you've

02:32seen the trailer she says this is just a job for me I have to do it for my family and I don't

02:38force people to come and watch my films do you think this movie will reduce the shaming around

02:43adult movie stars like it's just a profession at the end of the day I think this lady was by

02:49herself very dignified like everything like I'm sure there's so many things you wouldn't know

02:53about her like as soon as she could afford to she got a body double because she was quite

02:58religious and she didn't want to be doing all this but she was forced to because of her family

03:04and the monetary conditions we've only strived to sort of like tell her side of the story with

03:15as much dignity as possible without shying away from the truth

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