Kalki Koechlin on Made in Heaven 2 success, reveals why she did Ye Jawaani Hai Deewani despite being advised against it

Excerpts:

What about Goldfish made you want to be a part of it? How was it working with Deepti Naval, the parallel cinema queen of the 80’s?

It was a great experience working on the film, and working with Deepti Naval as we respect each other’s work. I’ve seen her films, read her poems, so we shared a nice banter from the start. However, she doesn’t like to rehearse and our director (Pushan Kripalani) is from theatre so he really loves to rehearse. She would just whisper her lines, sit there, marking it out very technically. Kushan was very worried, and would wonder ‘what are we going to do’. But then, the camera would come on she’d just transform into this fierce mother, someone who was completely different. She would be so unpredictable, you wouldn’t know what she is going to do next and that made it so much easier for me to just react. I loved that process with her.

You’ve somehow always done content driven films, films with stories and characters that stay with the audience for a long time…

When I read a script that I like, something happens in my tummy, there is a certain excitement. There are butterflies in my stomach, that’s when I know it is a good script, it is very instinctive. I consider myself lucky to have worked with such fabulous directors throughout my career, you know Dibakar Banerjee, Anurag Kashyap, Zoya Akhtar, Konkona Sen Sharma, it’s just been really great to have found that space.

Made in Heaven 2 has been receiving a lot of love, and you character Faiza Naqvi has a journey of her own through the season.

I had already given birth to Sappho when I shot for Made in Heaven 2. But it was fun to be pregnant on screen immediately after you were pregnant because you kind of know all those things about pregnancy, like feeling sick and pukish, or wanting to eat, all of that. Also how mentally, psychologically you want to prepare for your child and how protective you become about having the child. Living the actual experience for the shoot helped for sure.

This was after Sappho was born and because of Covid-19 it was actually broken into many many schedules. Like I would shoot for two days and then we couldn’t shoot for four months and then do a shot again, it was very spread out, that’s why this season took so long to make.

 

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What has been your takeaway from the show?

I was recently flying to Delhi and everyone had seen it. It shows what grabs people. It is so icky, it shows the ickiness of our society, shows that everybody is struggling with being good and bad, that none of us is perfect, there is this jumbled up stuff going on with everybody and everyone is trying to manage it. I think it is written very well, it is a great show and I am so glad to be a part of it.

 

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How has motherhood changed life for your, more so professionally?

100%! I am very aware that I have these next five years with my daughter, maybe seven if I stretch it. After that she is not going to be interested in hanging out with mumma. After that she’d want to be with her friends, children that age have their own social life, she’s going to be out the door mostly. So, I have these precious two years with her and I want to enjoy raising her, be with her. I do a lot less work than I used to do. But it has also made me more clear about what I love doing. Now I just know which are the things that I don’t want to let go of and I love working. I am glad to be back at work and it helps me assert myself, be independent. I want Sappho to see an independent woman because at the end of the day kids don’t do what what we tell them to do, they do what they see us doing. So, if she sees me as a capable, independent, working mom then she’ll also feel capable and independent.

 

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In one of your recent interview you had shared that you were advised by people not to do Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani. Why did you go ahead?

Half of the success in my career is because of Aditi; she’s a great character. Early in my career I also didn’t know whether to do it or not do it with all the advice that I was given. But, the day I made the decision was the day I went and met Aayan Mukerji in his office. The way he talked about Aditi, he knew her inside out, he knew stories from her childhood, he was telling me how Bunny and Aditi grew up and what they were doing in the backyard of their homes and how they played cricket. He had all these anecdotes, he had this character fleshed out, and for me that was it. His belief in that character was there from the start in his storytelling and in the way he described his characters. For me, that is what convinced me to do it