In her upcoming film Atrangi Re, Sara Ali Khan’s character Rinku Sooryavanshi, a feisty young woman, wants both Akshay Kumar and Dhanush as lovers and doesn’t want to let go of either, even as she says in the film, ‘Ek baar ek ladki ko dono mil jaayenge toh kya aafat aa jayegi (What if a girl gets both the men for once)?’ The film, which marks Sara’s first collaboration with director Aanand L Rai, is a twisted and complex love triangle that has never really been explored before.
While a section of people is hailing Sara’s dialogue as empowering, the actress says that it’s only her character’s innocence that they are depicting through the particular scene and are not trying to send out any kind of feminist message through it.
“At least for me, this is not a feminist movement,” Sara says. “This is not a protest. I don’t think we’re trying to take a societal stand. It is about everybody, whether it’s a guy or a girl. Rinku just happens to be a girl. It’s about love, wanting love and being honest and innocent. The one thing that Aanand ji was very clear about is no matter what lines I’m saying including ‘ek baar ek ladki ko dono mil jaayenge toh kya aafat aa jayegi’— there’s no insolence in that; there’s no entitlement; there’s only innocence in the way she’s saying that. And to me, it’s very interesting,” the actress added.
Talking about her approach to get into the skin of the character, Sara says, “Through the process of making this film, I fell in love with Rinku. I stopped judging her and I fully started to understand her. It was halfway through our schedule where Aanand ji told me, ‘Ab tu Rinku ban gayi hai. Aur ab tu chaahe kum acha karega lekin ab tu galat nahi karegi kyuki ab tu Rinku ko samajh gayi hai (You have now become Rinku. Now even if you don’t perform to the T, but you will not do wrong because you have understood Rinku).’ I’d drive with Aanand ji every day to shoot to Noida. I’d use to fool him and get answers out of him that ‘Aaj kya karenge? Aaj scene mein main kya karungi?’ And he would say, ‘We’ll talk on set’. I think the one thing that I feel Aanand ji, Dhanush sir and Akshay sir have is that they are very spontaneous people. So, once I understood my character, all I actually had to do was trust Aanand ji and live in that moment. There was no such method.”
Atrangi Re is a cross-cultural love story set in Bihar and Madurai. While Sara plays a proper Bihari girl, Dhanush essays the role of a Tamilian student. Heaping praise on her co-star, Sara says, “I’ve learned one thing from Dhanush sir that language is not as important as emotions and eye contact. Dhanush sir and I would often read the script in English. Some people might think that it’s of no use because it’s a Hindi film after all, but it’s important because I could understand his emotion and intention that way.”
