Richa Chadha shared how she consumed alcohol to perform her ‘drunk dancing’ sequence in Heeramandi authentically, only to realise that it didn’t work well for her.
Richa Chadha’s touching performance as Lajjo in Sanjay Leela Bhansali‘s recently released web series, Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar has been receiving a lot of accolades. One of the highlights is that her dance sequence where her character Lajjo shows up drunk at her lover, Nawab (essayed by Adhyayan Suman) and performs on ‘Masoom Dil Hai Mera’ song.
Recently in an interview with Zoom, Richa revealed how this scene in question wasn’t a cakewalk for her. The actress said that on the first day of shooting this dance number, despite being a teetotaler, she drank gin when she just couldn’t get it right even after 30-40 takes.
However, according to the actress, she quickly realized that her method acting actually wasn’t working out in her favour.
Richa shared, “On the first day, I wasn’t getting it, to do the drunk dancing. So, after 30-4o takes, I thought let me have a quarter and see what happens. I did have some gin. I drank a little bit, but it made things worse. I didn’t want that lethargy in the body movement, I wanted some of it, maybe the precision can go but I didn’t want to let go of the grace.”
Further, the actress said that her extensive background in a culture rich with poetry, music, and dance helped her to mimic intoxication convincingly, “If you have grown up in that world, with poetry, music and dance, it is going to be your second nature. So, I tried drinking on the first day of my solo song, but it didn’t work for me. I was better off pretending to be drunk than actually getting a little tipsy. It is a technical job, no matter how much I dance, my dress is so heavy, I have to hit that mark, interact. It was fun for me to do.”
Richa also talked about how she was totally committed to to her role in every scene which needed intense concentration and discipline, especially given the heavy costumes and complex choreography.
“I can safely say that for every scene I have done on this show, and I know there aren’t too many, I was 100 percent into it. I was not distracted while giving cues also to someone else, I was not out of character even when I was dancing. It took a lot from me, but I loved it,” the mom-to-be told the publication.
Set against the backdrop of the pre-Independence era in the 1940s, the series has a star-studded cast which includes names like Manisha Koirala, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditi Rao Hydari, Richa Chadha, Sanjeeda Sheikh, and Sharmin Segal.
