YRF talent Anya Singh on Qaidi Band co-star Aadar Jain: We’ve become best friends, he never had starry airs

When asked if she was nervous before going on the stage, Anya recalled how she was about to have a breakdown. “I was very nervous! I was getting my makeup and hair done and then someone said ‘we are going live in 10 mins’ and I was anxious. Aadar was relaxed. He was excited and wanted to go out as soon as possible. But for me, it was different. I did not know if I was ready.”

The Qaidi Band actor continued, “I was meeting Ranbir for the first time but I was so nervous that I could not strike a conversation with him. I kept repeating to myself that I am nervous. It was Adi sir who looked at me and Aadar and said just to have fun out there. Don’t be stressed or take much tension. You make a mistake, you make it. It’s not a serious event, don’t take it like that. So it calmed me. I was about to cry, that’s how nervous I was,”

But her journey wasn’t just from her vanity to the stage. The actor was jobless for several months, and one fine day her stars worked in her favor and she met Shanoo Sharma, the casting director of YRF.

“I moved to Bombay in 2015. Gave a couple of auditions but nothing worked out. It was a tough time, I had nobody here, I felt lost, uncertain and had no control. You feel frustrated when that happens. But one day, I walked into a coffee shop before workout. Shanoo Sharma saw me and asked me to audition. That’s how my audition started but it was just the beginning as there were so many rounds. I auditioned for two-and-a-half months for this role.”

But did she always want to be an actor? “I was on and off (wanting to be an actor) in my head. I’ve been to boarding school where you hardly get to watch TV, but music was readily available. I used to listen to a lot of Hindi music. I did a lot of theatre in school, and it used to make me feel good to perform on stage. I always had this career in the back of my mind. But I will say the songs drew me closer to cinema.” She laughs and adds that though she likes songs, now she knows how hard it is to shoot one sequence of a 3-4 minute song.

In Qaidi Band, the actor has also tried her hands on singing, “I love singing. When I got the chance to sing, I was really bad. But I was conscious. Director Faisal Habib opened me up, he motivated me, he inculcated the careless attitude in me. You know, when you’re singing to yourself it’s different but when you are enacting what you’re singing then the body language changes. So, that’s where I had to work.”

She further spoke about the other prep-up she underwent to get the character right, “We used to watch a lot of reference videos. They tried to take us to a real jail but that didn’t work out. We read books, took diction classes, we took music classes as we were singers in the film, and learnt how to use instruments. We weren’t allowed to wash our hair. We wore no makeup, so we were very close to our characters.”

“After the set was prepared, we were kept in the jail to feel the kind of isolation one goes through. We were made familiar with surroundings. So when finally we had to shoot, we were comfortable,” she adds.

Talking about her co-star Aadar Jain, Anya says that the actor, who happens to be the cousin of Ranbir Kapoor, has no starry airs about himself. “Aadar is such a grounded genuine person. When I got to know that he is from a film family, I thought he would be a bit snobbish. But he was so easy to get along. He is relaxed, always makes me laugh and super likeable. Both of us used to listen to each other and we all got along together really well. We are like family, I’ll say. I can call them whenever I feel like. And since Aadar has been to a film school, he would teach me technicalities I did not know about.”

And lastly, when we asked if she is nervous about the competition ahead as many newbies including Jhanvi Kapoor, Sara Ali Khan and others are going to make their debut in the industry, Anya said, “Competition is a good thing, it will keep you on toes.”