Sanjay Leela Bhansali is all set to reveal the first look of Heeramandi on Thursday but before his next project sees the light of day, Seema Pahwa, who worked with him in Gangubai Kathiawadi, revealed that contrary to people’s perception, she never saw him yell at anyone on set. In a chat with Rajshri Unplugged, Seema said that Gangubai Kathiawadi was a “different” experience for her and she was “scared” to take it up.
Seema elaborated that she was scared of two things while working on the film. “One was, I had never worked with Sanjay. I didn’t know about his style of working. I didn’t know how comfortable he makes the actors feel. The second challenge was, if the audience will accept me or not. Because they had just been seeing me doing comedy so seeing me playing a negative role… I didn’t know if the audience would accept me,” she said. Seema played the role of brothel owner Sheela mausi in the film.
Seema said she was “very surprised” that Sanjay thought of her for this role and added that he gave her abundant freedom to experiment with the character. “There was no interference from his end,” she said. The actor also addressed the filmmaker’s temperamental nature on set and shared that she had heard stories of him yelling at the crew but she never witnessed it first hand.
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“Sanjay believes in perfection so anyone who is a perfectionist will get annoyed at others. The kind of perfection he expects, if you don’t give him that, he will get mad at you, he will scream, which I had heard happens on his set. But I am lucky that this never happened in front of me. I have never seen him get upset on set. I shot with him for many days but I never saw him yell on the set but I had also heard of such stories,” she said and added, “When I got on the set, people would tell me that he is very temperamental, but I am lucky that I never saw that side of his personality.”
Ranbir Kapoor, who worked with Sanjay Leela Bhansali in his debut film Saawariya, has spoken about the filmmaker’s temperamental nature previously. “When I assisted Mr (Sanjay Leela) Bhansali (on ‘Black’), he used to really treat me as an assistant director. I used to be kneeling down for hours, he used to hit us, he used to abuse us… that only hardens you and prepares you for the world,” he said.
Seema Pahwa also shared a few kind words about Alia Bhatt, who won a National Film Award for her role in the film Gangubai Kathiawadi. She was quite wary of working with a young superstar and was a little skeptical if Alia would be arrogant about her success but she was thoroughly surprised by the actor’s warm demeanour. “Alia was also a surprise for me. I thought she is a new girl, very successful. You never know how arrogant she could be, how she works. But she is extremely hardworking, very sincere, respects her elders, senior actors. She does it very well. I was very comfortable with her,” she said.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali has now announced his next film, titled Love and War, with Alia Bhatt, Ranbir Kapoor and Vicky Kaushal.
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