Exclusive | Chitrangada Singh on being Salman Khan’s oldest heroine in 20 years in Battle of Galwan: ‘My work is so different than Salman’s’

“I never thought I’d do a Salman Khan film because my work is very different from his. But I think it just fit perfectly. When we were shooting, I just felt I was supposed to be a part of it. He’s an amazing actor, honestly. If you see some of his work, like they used to say about Rishi Kapoor, you can never make out that he’s acting. There’s a lot of his persona that he carries,” Chitrangada tells SCREEN in an exclusive interview.

Turning producer

Chitrangada Singh feels being the daughter of an army man certainly helped her crack the role of an army wife better. Just like how her sporting background and having sportsmen around her prompted her to turn producer with Shaad Ali’s Soorma (2018), the biopic of hockey player Sandeep Singh. Since she wasn’t getting the parts she wanted to play as an actor then, Chitrangada decided to become a passion producer.

Diljit Dosanjh and Taapsee Pannu in Soorma.

“It was such a wonderful story that you didn’t even have to add any fiction to it. It was so dramatic on its own. I had a keeda for writing, so I wrote 30 pages and we started pitching,” recalls Chitrangada, adding “But a lot of sports biopics like Azhar (2016) and MS Dhoni: The Untold Story (2016) had been made by then, so not a lot of people wanted to do it. I’d sent a cold mail to Sony. Sneha Rajani was the head then, and we got a response from her. She backed me through and through. Diljit and Taapsee were on my wish list. I wanted Diljit to play Sandeep so bad.”

She recollects a lot of her well-wishers pushed her to play the female lead opposite Diljit Dosanjh’s Sandeep Singh in Soorma, which was eventually essayed by Taapsee Pannu. “I was completely wrong for the part. Taapsee was so correct for that hockey player from Punjab. Her physicality was just right. As a producer, you become very greedy that the casting should be right. Hopefully, I get to do one more. I’m trying to put something together, let’s see,” reveals Chitrangada.

Chitrangada Singh in Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders.

Chitrangada 3.0

Work isn’t as bad for Chitrangada Singh as it was back in 2017. While she plans to develop a project for herself, she’s also getting enough work in cinemas and streaming. The year started for her with Neeraj Pandey’s political drama Bihar: The Bengal Chapter and is ending with Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders, both on Netflix India. In the latter, she plays a media house owner and the only surviving member of the elite Bansal family who have been murdered. Chitrangada admits she didn’t have to work too hard to crack her part, given the script was fleshed out with immense precision and in great detail by Honey Trehan and co-writer Smita Sharma.

“Everything was there in the script. The screenplay is so detailed that not a dot, comma or full stop goes missing. Honey is one of those directors who perfectly understands the rhythm of each line, forget each scene. He also knows when you’re just getting away with the scene. So, he pushes you a lot. She probably is the one who did it because she’s the only one surviving. There’s a lot of media games and powerplay involved. So, she’s capable of doing it because she’s used to living a brutal life,” says Chitrangada.

With the Raat Akeli Hai sequel, Chitrangada also got the chance to share screen space with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who reprises his role of investigating officer Jatil Yadav from the first part, which released back in 2020. She was initially also supposed to be paired with him in Kushan Nandy’s 2017 action thriller Babumoshai Bandookbaaz, but decided to walk out after the makers allegedly wanted her to do intimate scenes with him. “I’m very happy I got to do this kind of a film with him, where we had a lot of interaction. I hope we get an even better film,” says Chitrangada, adding, “I was toh very excited. I didn’t know then when we’d able to work together. The first time we met at Honey’s office, if I may say, we were both happy to see each other.”

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Along with Nawazuddin, Chitrangada also gets to share screen space with powerhouses like Deepti Naval and Revathy. “It was lovely watching them. It’s always nice to have such senior actors around you,” she says, adding that she knew Deepti from before and have known her as “a very warm person and a very subtle, controlled, and understated actor.” Meeting Revathy, however, was “one of those fan moments,” she confesses, given she’s a huge fan of Suresh Krissna’s 1991 romantic drama Love, starring Revathy and Salman. When I remind her that she’s now worked with both Maggie and Prithvi, she couldn’t contain her excitement. “My favourites!,” she exclaims, beaming.