“Whenever I have taken a risk it has paid off”: Alia Bhatt tells it like it is

By Nichola

on April 10, 2018

Li’l Miss Alia Bhatt is preparing to sock us in the solar plexus again with one cracker of a performance. Her histrionics seen in the trailer of Raazi, which dropped today, have everyone sitting up agog all over again. Speaking about her prep for the role of Sehmat, the young Indian spy in Pakistan, Alia shares that the best part of the character was that she wasn’t a Lara Croft. Sehmat is a young, naive girl, who decides to risk her life for her country. This, for Alia, was the most beautiful aspect, because she didn’t have to enact anything.

Prep for the role included improving her Urdu and then unlearning what she had picked up, because she plays a Kashmiri and wasn’t required to speak chaste Urdu or Hindi! She even learnt the Morse Code by heart, which helped her get perfectly into the character. She also learnt to drive a Jonga (a kind of jeep used by the armed forces). That’s as far as the externals go. “Emotionally, one would have never been able to prepare for the journey I set out on, because once we started shooting, it was relentless," said the actress, in an interaction with a daily.

We have come to expect the unexpected from Alia and Raazi is no different… She admitted, “Yeah, I have run risks, but if I don’t do that now, when will I do it? I don’t want to live with ‘I could have’ and ‘Maybe I should have’ kind of thoughts. I don’t believe in weighing a film’s box office prospects before giving it my nod. If my instinct says that I should do it, I go ahead. Like I really wanted to be a part of Sehmat’s world because I’ve never narrated a true story. Of course, we all want to do films that do well, but I also have to live my life truly as an actor and for that, I have to pick different characters. In that sense, I am selfish.”

It’s this ‘selfishness’ that sees her scanning the umpteen offers for films that surprise or challenge her. “I think I am attracted to that little fear, ‘Will I be able to do this?’ That forms the basis of my hunt for roles. Fortunately, that instinct hasn’t failed me on too many occasions and it feels great that whenever I have taken a risk, it has paid off," shared Sehmat aka Alia.

And that is pure experience talking – you go, girl!