Vikram Gaikwad on turning Lara Dutta into Indira Gandhi for BellBottom: Everyone was shocked

People are going absolutely gaga over the way actor Lara Dutta has transformed into late politician Indira Gandhi for the upcoming thriller BellBottom. And major credit for it goes to Vikram Gaikwad, the make-up expert behind several films.

Calling it a “humongous responsibility”, the three-time National award-winning makeup artist says, “The responsibility of executing the same on face visually comes on the shoulders of an actor and make-up design team. The result you see today is the outcome of a very thorough process. I read the script and then the casting and direction team informed us that Lara is going to perform as Indira Gandhi.”

And thus began the challenge, as Gaikwad felt there’s literally no likeness between their faces.

“However, Lara is a brilliant actor and hence I had to do my best to deliver the look,” he says, adding, “To start with, we researched several pictures and videos of Indiraji and compared them with Lara’s. Indiraji has three prominent features — eye brows, nose and face cut along with hair style. If you see, we’ve changed the shape and style of eye brows to make them look more dominant and done prosthetics on nose.”

Around two to three trials were done before the shooting started, and each make up took three hours. Thanking his team, Gaikwad continues, “We make prosthetic pieces ourself. I’d like to specially mention Jagdish Yere who supervises the team for day to day consistent results and Prashant Doiphode for his expertise in making pieces.”

And the end result “shocked everyone” to say the least, according to Gaikwad.

“There’s one reaction that kept coming since the beginning and that was of shock. Most important thing is also that Lara, Akshay (Kumar), Ranjit (director) and Jackky (Bhagnani, producer) had trust in me and my team and co-operated all throughout,” he adds.

While people were stunned with Dutta’s look, hair stylist Sapna Bhavnani expressed her disappointment on Twitter and wrote, “Such a bad wig though can see the lining of it. But of course, you wouldn’t as you’re not a hair person. We haven’t come close to mastering hair yet.”

Reacting to this, Gaikwad has only this to say, “I don’t think it’s worth commenting. I generally don’t do these discussions through media.”