Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali spoke about a heated interaction that he had with actor Richa Chadha on the set of his debut streaming series, Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar. He said that he lost his patience with Richa when she couldn’t deliver the performance that he expected from her, and that in turn, Richa became upset with him. Her tears and humiliation in the final shot, Bhansali said in a new interview, were real.
Speaking to India Today about an elaborate shot in the song “Masoom Dil Hai Mera,” Bhansali recalled that Richa took some time nail the performance. “That was a special moment. But unka baith nahi raha tha (Her performance wasn’t landing). She was trying, but I wasn’t getting what I wanted,” he said. “After a point, I got a little upset. I said, ‘You’ve rehearsed it, but it’s still not falling in place, you’re not getting the state of mind’. I got a little angry, and she became upset as well.”
Bhansali added that he decided to use the feelings that Richa was experiencing in that moment in the shot. “The anger on her face was so special. That moment was a result of what I said to her and what she said to me. In all the songs I’ve shot, big numbers, this is one of the rare moments of the actor feeling the humiliation of the scene that she went through rather than feeling the humiliation of me getting angry and saying, ‘How many takes will you want?’ The anger was from both sides, but you need to be in that state of mind. Another actor might have stormed off the set in anger, but Richa and I both understood that the shot is more important, the song is more important, the scene is more important, the series is more important than either of us.”
The filmmaker said that when Richa managed to deliver the shot, the entire crew erupted in applause, and that they apologised to each other for what they said. “I went and hugged her, and we forgot about all that had happened before the shot. But sometimes, you have to arrive at that moment. An actor has to be ready to arrive at that moment. A director has to wait and bring the actor to that moment. If you are taking too many takes, and I scold you, then you will feel the humiliation that the character was meant to show. When I was watching it, I thought, ‘She’s actually crying’. She held on to every beat. Till the last moment, she didn’t let go of that anger and frustration.”
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In a previous interview, Richa said that she was once made to give 99 retakes for a shot that didn’t even make it to the final cut. Bhansali’s demanding nature has often been spoken about by his cast and crew, but the filmmaker insisted that on set, he simply becomes ‘obsessed’ with realising his vision, and admitted to losing his temper when he doesn’t get what he wants. Heeramandi was released on Netflix on May 1 to mixed reviews.
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