Exclusive! Ananya Panday on Gehraiyaan: I liked the messiness, complexity, honesty of the film

With her fourth film, Gehraiyaan, Ananya Panday has dived into deeper space in terms of her characterisation. The film marks her first outing with the director, Shakun Batra, and co-stars Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, and Dhairya Karwa. In Gehraiyaan, Ananya plays the role of Tia, who is Deepika's character, Alisha's cousin. Ahead of the release of the film, we caught up with the young actor and asked her what prompted her to sign up for the intense film.

Ananya exclusively told OTTplay, "It wasn't really a choice for me; I really wanted to work with Shakun. As soon as I heard about the film, I knew I wanted to be a part of it, simply because it was extremely relatable to me. I liked the messiness, the complexity, the honesty of the film. As an actor, I felt it would challenge me to do something different to grow. Honestly, it's done that and more, not just as an actor, but I really feel I've grown as a person with just the experience of this film. I'm really looking forward to what people think."

The whole film was shot during the coronavirus pandemic, but apart from that, what was the most challenging aspect of shooting Gehraiyaan? To which Ananya replied, "It was a complete joy to be on this set. But I think because of the characters in the film and the ideas we were exploring, personally, we all had to kind of dive in much deeper, we had to kind of go to uncomfortable places in terms of the emotions we had to portray on screen. I'm not going to speak for everyone else, but getting over certain inhibitions was sort of challenging for me."

Meanwhile, Gehraiyaan has opted for an OTT release and will directly stream on Amazon Prime Video. When asked if it has eased out the box office pressure, the actor said, "I don't think anything can ever replace the experience of the cinema, but I don't think it needs to replace the experience of the cinema. I feel like they can co-exist. There'll be certain stories that are perfect for OTT; more intimate stories, more brief stories in that sense, where they don't need to think about putting a project together or casting, only big stars in that sense. Then there will always be films that you should see on the big screen in that sense. I'm just starting, so for me, that box office pressure, especially even before I started, has kind of gone away. So it feels good."

Gehraiyaan is streaming on Amazon Prime Video from February 11, 2022.