Ameesha Patel, in a recent podcast, recalled her bold turn in ‘Lazy Lamhe’ song from Saif Ali Khan-Rani Mukerji starrer Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic.
When the sultry number ‘Lazy Lamhe’ from Kunal Kohli’s Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic dropped in 2008, it marked a turning point in Ameesha Patel’s on screen.
Set against the backdrop of a poolside birthday party, the song features Ameesha Patel seducing Saif Ali Khan’s character, while Rani Mukerji and the children sabotage the celebration by ruining decorations, releasing lobsters, and creating chaos in the background.
Recently, when Ameesha made an appearance on Ranveer Allahbadia’s podcast, the actress walked down the memory lane and shared how she had an image reset with the popular song.
The Gadar actress said, “When people talk about a song being sexy, they talk about ‘Lazy Lamhe’. People still tell me that ‘you look so hot in that song’. The tag of being hot got attached to me because of that song, and my previous image of being the good girl completely changed. I never considered myself hot or sexy, but Aditya Chopra told me that I always had that, even in Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai.
Ameesha elaborated that producer Aditya Chopra approached her with a dual challenge- to play a ‘bimbo’ and to radically shift her image from the ‘pretty and beautiful girl’ to someone seen as ‘hot and sexy’ by wearing a bikini as he wanted her to break away from her established persona from her previous films.
“When Aditya called me for the part, he explained that it was a small role. Basically a bimbo; a flaky character like a dumb blonde. He asked whether I would be able to play this. That became my challenge number one, and I thought this was a great opportunity for me as an actor. He also said, There is one more challenge. I want to change your image from the pretty and beautiful girl to hot and sexy, and you will have to wear a bikini,” the actress said in the podcast.
However, the actress refused to don a bikini and instead negotiated another look- a bikini top paired with hot pants.
Ameesha recalled, “I was very nervous, and I told him that I won’t wear the bikini, but I will give him what he needs as a director, and become the first YRF actress to do it without the bikini.”
The actress revealed that she had put in immense effort for ‘Lazy Lamhe’, which was filmed over 11 to 12 days, far longer than the typical 2 to 3 days usually allotted for music videos. She also mentioned that she had taken scuba diving lessons specifically for the underwater sequences, where she needed to lip-sync without releasing bubbles, as the shots had to appear clean and seamless.
“We were shooting in the winters, and both I and Saif got sick. But whenever we would see the underwater shots, he would always say, ‘How the F do you look so hot underwater?’ I didn’t realize that I was having that effect on men until Saif and Kunal Kohli pointed it out,” Ameesha said.
Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic revolves around Ranbeer (Saif Ali Khan), an emotionally distant industrialist who is sentenced to raise four orphaned kids whose parents he accidentally killed, until a whimsical angel named Geeta (Rani Mukerji) arrives to heal their broken household with love, laughter, and a touch of magic.
