Bipasha Basu is making a transition of sorts and rather pre-occupied with it. It’s not fairly often that you get to play a she-warrior and that too in an Academy Award-nominated director’s film.
She has her fingers crossed as she rehearses and shoots for Roland Joffe’s Singularity, her launch pad to Hollywood, in Brisbane.
“It’s like going to a new school,” exclaims Bipasha. Things look promising, albeit it’s a whole new act for her.
“This is a period drama and I will be playing a Maratha warrior called Tuleja Naik,” she is upbeat. Well, it’s apparent that there will be no dearth of challenges.
“I will be learning horse-riding (she plays a bodyguard!), deep-sea diving, fencing etc. I could not make enough time for a longer preparation. However, I’m confident, I will be able to do all this,” she says.
Singularity is set in different countries, across different time zones. India in 1770 and America in 2020, to be precise!
Talk about Roland, City of Joy and The Killing Fields director, and Bipasha says, “This is a chance of a lifetime for me. Roland is an amazing director and I’m a director’s actor. I’ve seen his earlier films, which are all just great.”
And she takes a moment to recall how the role fell into her lap, “Roland was auditioning in India and I bumped into him at a hotel. I just managed to say ‘hi’. However, after he went back, I got a call from him saying that he liked my voice and offered me the role.”
“I will be working with actors from all around the world,” she goes on.
The film, written by Ajey Jhankar, also has Josh Hartnett, Chris Pine, ‘Bond’ lady Olga Kurylenko and Abhay Deol among others.
While the actress will have to try and measure up with them, she minces no words on her excitement of working with Hartnett.
This historical romance will be set against the backdrop of the first Anglo-Maratha war in the 18th century.
Has she brushed up her history lessons? “Whatever I know, will not match the research the director has done. They are a talented set of people and they know what they are doing,” she informs.
Bollywood films apart, has she ever thought how it would be to work in a South Indian film?
“I’ve no hang up with any language. But South Indian languages are very difficult. I think it’s very important to understand a language to do a movie in it.”
And it’s not just films, she has her hand in other pies as well. “I was coming out with my second fitness DVD, but now with Singularity, it will have to wait. I am yet to shoot for the DVD. My clothesline too will have to wait till next year,” she informs.
Meanwhile, Singularity just might guarantee a re-emergence for Bipasha.