The trailer of the much-awaited film, ‘Gehraiyaan’ was launched virtually via a press conference on January 20, starring Deepika Padukone, Ananya Pandey, Siddhant Chaturvedi and Dhairya Karwa in lead roles. During the trailer launch, Deepika called her Gehraiyaan character “a lot more raw and a lot more real” while accepting that she needed to dive deep inside her to play her.
The Actress revealed that she had to even revisit some not-so-pleasant moments from her past relationships. she also addressed the intimate scenes in the film and how director Shakun Batra made actors feel safe and secure to portray such vulnerability on screen. Deepika shared about her experience of shooting intimate scenes for the Shakun Batra directorial, explaining they would have been difficult if it was not for the director making her and the rest of the cast feel safe and secure. Deepika said that doing Gehraiyaan was not easy, because showcasing “intimacy is not easy”!
She said, “I don’t think it would be possible without the comfort that he (Shakun) has given all of us. You feel you are working in an extremely safe and secure environment because intimacy is not easy. It is not something that we have ever experienced or explored in Indian cinema before, in the way we have in this film. So, to go down that route of intimacy, of vulnerability, is only possible when you know that the director is not doing it for the eyeballs, but he is doing it because that’s just where the characters are coming from, through their journey and their experiences.”
Deepika added that she wouldn’t want to call her character in Gehraiyaan “bold” but more “raw and real”. She said, “All I can say is that I have not done something like this before. I have done films and a lot of characters that are love stories or relationships dramas. I want to say that my character in Gehraiyaan is bold. I also don’t want to say bold because (of) the way we understood bold in our films and the characters that we’ve seen. So, I’d say raw. I think, for me, this character is a lot more raw and a lot more real than some of the other characters that I have played. Emotionally, it is completely stripped and naked in that sense, and completely vulnerable. I think to be able to do that on screen, it has to come from a very deep place. It is not to say that I haven’t experienced that before. But, not to this extent, where I have to really dig deep and go to the places that aren’t really that pleasant, and are not really pleasant experiences from my own life, as well as dealing with mental health issues.”
Sharing about the movie, Producer Karan Johar said that the trailer only scratches the surface of complex modern relationships. “We are expressing our syntax, introducing you to complex, twisted and complex characters. The trailer scratches the surface but there is a lot more than meets the eye. At the face of it, you might think it is a film about infidelity-based relationships but it is not just that. It is talking about so much more, choices and consequences of so much more,” Johar said during the virtual trailer launch event.
“It is a film that you have not seen. It is a film about the power of love, lust, and longing by the millennials and how they react to love, lust, and longing, and how it is about the choices that they can make. Sometimes lust takes precedence over love, sometimes love takes the bashing for its innocence,” Johar added.
About teaming up with Deepika for the first time, filmmaker Shakun Batra shared that the actor brought in a lot from her personal experiences for Gehraiyaan. He said, “This is my first time with Deepika. The hunger she has, and the work she has done on this one, she has completely surprised me. What I was trying to explore with Deepika is her own experiences, and what she can bring to the film. It has to do a lot about her anxiety, her life, her experience in different relationships, how we can make that part of the story. It was about drawing as much of her real self into the character.”
