Kriti Sanon: Before Panipat, I stopped watching period dramas

Kriti Sanon plays Sadashiv Rao Bhau's (played by Arjun Kapoor) wife Parvati Bai in the upcoming period drama Panipat. The film is helmed by Ashutosh Gowariker.

Kriti Sanon plays the role of Parvati Bai in Ashutosh Gowariker’s period drama Panipat.

Kriti Sanon has had a busy year with the release of as many as four films (Luka Chuppi, Arjun Patiala, Housefull 4 and Kalank). Now, she is all set to appear on the silver screen in a never seen before avatar. She plays Sadashiv Rao Bhau’s (played by Arjun Kapoor) wife Parvati Bai in the upcoming period drama Panipat. The film is helmed by Ashutosh Gowariker.

While Sanon’s character is being compared to Priyanka Chopra’s Kashibai in Bajirao Mastani, we asked her if she watched period dramas and took notes from any actor’s performance while preparing for her role. “Before Panipat, I deliberately stopped watching period films. Sometimes unknowingly you pick up certain things which an actor has done, then it becomes repetitive and there’s nothing new left for the audience. So, you have to play it in your way, and the characters are also different, so you cannot take from another actor’s performance,” the actor said.

For playing Parvati Bai, Kriti Sanon brushed up her Marathi and took lessons from a dialect coach. She also had Ashutosh Gowariker helping her to keep it as real as possible. “I didn’t know Marathi, so I wanted to make sure that whatever little Marathi I was speaking in a Hindi film should be authentic yet very effortless. I wanted to sound like I have been speaking the language since childhood, especially for those who know it because they are the ones who call your bluff. I had a dialect coach and Ashu sir also helped. By the end of it, I started enjoying the language. It’s a very sweet language. It has a rhythm and tune to it, which is very nice,” said Sanon as she shared her experience of learning Marathi for Panipat.

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Apart from the language and dialect, the actor had a different approach towards her body language. Instead of being uptight, she preferred to stay casual and easy.

“I feel whenever it is a period film, we have this perception that people had a certain poise and elegance in the way they sat, walked or talked. People think they spoke slower than how we do, but if we look at it, it’s coming from previous films we have watched. We don’t know how they behaved. Marathis have a rhythm to their body even when they are talking. I tried to keep it as real as possible and not feel the pressure of being in a period drama,” Kriti Sanon shared.

Panipat, also starring Sanjay Dutt and Arjun Kapoor, will hit the screens on December 6.

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