Mandira Bedi recently revealed how she landed her first acting job in Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol-starrer Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge even though acting was the last thing on her mind at the time. Mandira also shared an anecdote from the shoot of the film. “Let me tell you it wasn’t fun”, said Mandira in a recent interview.
In a conversation with Curly Tales, Mandira Bedi recalled getting the role of Shanti. She shared that since her older brother was a banker who had finished his MBA, she wanted to follow his path but since she couldn’t crack that, she started studying at Sophia College for a media communication course. It was there that she started interning in advertising firms and landed an internship at Prahlad Kakkar’s office. It was during her time there that she landed her first breakout role in the TV show Shanti.
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She added, “It was not something I ever imagined would happen or wanted to happen. I was this junior most intern and ‘go for’– go for this, go for that, clean this, wipe that, so I was that. The director and producer of the show Shanti had come to Prahlad Kakkar to get an ad film made and he saw me there. I don’t know what he saw in me. And he asked me to come for an audition in a business suit and I didn’t own one. I was in college, who wants a business suit for college, right? And I went wearing a jeans and a t-shirt and I got called for another audition and for the second one, I was returning from lunch, wearing a salwar kameez, and I happened to have a little arrow drawn with eyeliner on my forehead and he was like what was I thinking? This is Shanti. This is the look I like. Three and half years and 800-1000 episodes, I wore an arrow all the time. Couple of scenes in the hospital was the only time when the arrow wasn’t on my forehead. That’s how it happened.”
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Mandira said that she also landed a job in advertising as she planned on working in advertising after she finished her education. When she started getting acting offers, she promised her employer that she would come back to her job but that never happened.
Revealing her first pay cheque of Rs 30,000, she said, “I used to intern every semester, but the one with Prahlad was my last. My first pay cheque was when I did Shanti. I used to get paid 30,000 per month. I was like, ‘I have never seen so much money before’. I could be working 10 days in that month, or 25, didn’t matter, my salary for the month was Rs 30,000. The first cheque came to me was that of Rs 15,000, because we started to work from the 15th of the month, so it was half month salary. And I remember, I took that cheque, I deposited in the bank and I took presents for everyone. My first pay cheque, I need to buy something for every body.”
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Mandira then featured in the 1995 film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. She played the role of Preeti. Recalling her time shooting for the film, Mandira said that she started with the shoot of the song “Mehendi Laga Ke Rakhna.” She shared, “I remember Saroj Khan telling me, ‘you are shaking your shoulder like Sunny Deol, you need to shake your hips, women shake their hips, men shake their shoulders’. So I was like, ‘okay, this is not a good start’. And I have very little grace in me. I can lift weights and I can run miles, but I don’t have adayein. Woh adayein mujh mein bilkul bhi nahi hai. It was a little horrifying for me.”
She shared that she shot the song for four days and found it to be a completely different experience than Shanti. “Four days, where I am asked to do things I have never done before. Move parts of my body which I have never moved before so let me tell you it wasn’t fun and I was like ‘what have I got myself into?’ With Shanti, I was giving this hard strong looks, but with Preeti I was made to do many things I have never done before,” she said.
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