Movie-mates

Lara has been dreaming of turning producer for long. However,life has a way of putting things in perspective and that’s exactly what happened with her. The script of Chalo Dilli was offered to Lara by director Shashant Shah purely as an acting assignment. “Shashant approached me to play the role of Mihika Banerjee,which I readily accepted. At that time,Shashant was looking for a producer and he wanted somebody established to come on board,” reminisces Lara. Shashant approached several big production houses with the script,but none of them paid attention to this medium-budget film. “That’s when Mahesh suggested that he and I produce the film together. Mahesh and I complement each other well. He has a wonderful business sense while I am familiar with the functioning of the industry.” And having producer-distributor Eros Entertainment on their side definitely proved to be a huge advantage.

Chalo Dilli is the story of two fiercely different people coming together during a 48-hour journey,and being forced to depend on each other. While Lara plays the role of a hard-nosed,sophisticated,urban working woman,Vinay Pathak plays a rustic character. “The script was written keeping Vinay in mind. When I read the script,I felt that Vinay and my pairing would be the USP of the film,because people would be seeing us together for the first time. And the audience seems to be loving it,” Lara states confidently. Vinay too is pleased about being paired opposite her. “Lara is well-read and well-travelled. As a producer-actor,she got so much to the table. It hasn’t even been a year since she started her production house and the film is ready to hit the screens. It tells us a lot about her confidence.”

The final product has made Lara happy,but being the actor-producer on the sets of Chalo Dilli was “exhausting” she claims. To begin with they had to wrap the shoot in 33 days keeping the budget in mind. “I wish we had the extravagance of shooting for 68 days. Every time I was giving a shot,I knew at the back of my mind that my unit hadn’t dispersed for dinner or I knew the sun would set in two hours and we had four hours of shoot left. There were so many wonderful moments during the course of filming,but I was too exhausted to enjoy any of those,” explains Lara,a self-proclaimed “hard taskmaster”. “I want things to be done in a certain manner. Like most women,I see to it that they are done efficiently.”

Do statements like: only out-of-work actresses turn producers’ bother her? “These statements are coming from people who haven’t done anything in life. These myth like statements should just be banned,” she says.

“We will soon start the pre-production of the next film from our banners. Meanwhile,I have Don 2 to look forward to,” she concludes.

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