Exclusive! I wasn't worried about my screen time in Gaalipata 2 amid its vast ensemble cast: Vaibhavi Shandilya

On the contrary, the actress believes that being with a bunch of good actors, like veteran Anant Nag, for instance, helped enhance her performance.

Vaibhavi is paired with Ganesh in Gaalipata 2

Vaibhavi Shandilya is on cloud nine; her second film in Kannada, Gaalipata 2, in which she is paired with leading man Ganesh is a hit. It is a film (and role) that she is immensely proud to have been a part of. Yet, by her own admission, when it was first offered to her, Vaibhavi had no clue about what Gaalipata meant to Kannada audiences and that being a part of the franchise would be a big deal. It was a little later, after she discussed the same with some friends in Karnataka that it all made sense to her.

“I watched the original film twice before I met director Yogaraj Bhat. When I flew to Bengaluru, the team was sure that they wanted me opposite Ganesh. I had a condition, though, that all my lines for my scenes be given to me before-hand so that I could learn them by-heart. Very often on film sets, scenes and dialogues get changed on the spot. But as a relative newbie to Kannada cinema, I wanted to be thorough with what I needed to do for the role. The whole team was more than willing to help me with that and I would be given my scenes and lines well in advance. As an artiste, for me learning the lines was also about feeling and understanding what my character was going through,” says Vaibhavi.

But wouldn’t it have sufficed if the team had just explained each sequence to her and then got her to lip sync? “We could have done it like that, but that would be very superficial. I need to understand the depth of each scene and emotion of the character – what is she thinking and why is she saying these things. When I am saying my lines, I need to know what I am saying; it’s just a part of my process,” she adds.

The advantage of this, says Vaibhavi, is that she can now understand Kannada a lot better. “I might not be able to frame sentences in grammatically correct fashion just yet, but I can understand if I am spoken to in Kannada. This helps a great deal on, say, the set of Martin, where director AP Arjun only speaks in Kannada. What happens now is that Arjun explains scenes to me in Kannada and I have to then repeat it to him in English as I have understood to see if it’s all in sync,” she says, adding, “Now, even if my lines are given to me only 15 minutes earlier, I find it a lot easier to handle it.”

Gaalipata 2, says Vaibhavi, is a film that came to her exactly two years after Raj Vishnu. “I knew that this a film that will make a mark and that whatever I do after that has to be as good or better than it. Thankfully, I got Martin as my next

Gaalipata 2 is Vaibhavi’s first ensemble cast project and even though she is paired opposite Ganesh, when there are so many characters, the screen time and scope for performance is likely to be limited. Did that cross her mind when she was offered to play Shwetha? “It was never about how much time I was going to get onscreen; what mattered was how I was going to be presented. Even if I end up with only 15 minutes in a two-and-a-half-hour movie, the question is only whether my character will have the right impact. Having seen Gaalipata, I knew that Yogaraj sir writes stories wherein every character is given a certain responsibility in the narrative to enhance the story. So, I was not worried about so many other characters being a part of the film. On the contrary, having good actors around you helps you enhance your performance as an actor. For instance, Anant Nag sir, I cannot begin to describe how happy I am at having got the opportunity to work with him. As a child, I had seen Malgudi Days, so, meeting him in person was a beautiful experience for me,” says Vaibhavi.

Up next is her film with Dhruva Sarja, Martin, the climax of which and the songs are still pending. “We had announced September 30 as our release date, but that has now been pushed ahead because there were unforeseen delays in the shoot. owing to unfortunate incidents in the personal lives of crew members. We didn’t want to rush it, so, Martin is going to take some more time to come to theatres,” she says, adding that she has at least 20-25 days-worth of work left on the film.

But why hasn’t she signed anything new yet? “It’s a conscious choice that I wanted Gaalipata 2 and Martin to release before deciding what to do next. I’d rather wait for good things to happen to me; ten films a year is not on my agenda. Whatever I take up next has to be worthwhile for the audience to head to the theatres and watch,” she signs off.

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