During an interaction, Meghna Gulzar, the director of 'Chhapaak' spoke at length about casting Deepika Padukone in the lead role.
Meghna Gulzar and Deepika Padukone have collaborated for the first time in Chhapaak. The film is based on an acid attack survivor played by Deepika and also has Vikrant Massey as the male lead. The trailer for the film was unveiled earlier this week and her never-seen-before avatar surprised everyone and left with goosebumps. Deepika plays the role of Malti and Vikrant will be seen as an activist in Chhapaak.
During an interaction with Mumbai Mirror, when Meghna was asked about choosing Deepika for the role, the talented filmmaker stated, "It takes courage to discard your calling card and bare yourself completely. When you are shorn of all the usual trapping hair, make-up, costume, jewellery—with only your craft exposed, it’s a brave path to walk and Deepika has done it with a flourish. For me, it was important to take a face associated with beauty because when you distort it as it would happen to a survivor, the contrast and impact are far stronger.
She further said, "Not everybody is Deepika Padukone, but these other girls were beautiful too and didn’t deserve this to happen to them. No girl deserves it going forward. I’m fortunate Deepika agreed to play the part. During our research, we discovered that Laxmi Agarwal’s pictures before the attack are strikingly similar to Deepika’s when she was young. There is an uncanny similarity in their physicality which shows up in the prosthetics. That was my starting point. Then came the larger thought of the impact of the message which would get magnified with her in the lead as Malti (who is fashioned after Laxmi). The idea wasn’t to make Deepika look like Laxmi but to make her look like what she’d have looked, God forbid if something like this happened to her. The essence of Deepika is still there, particularly in her eyes."
Chhapaak is slated to release on January 10, 2020.
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 "'It was important to take a face associated with beauty': Meghna Gulzar on casting Deepika Padukone in 'Chhapaak'")
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