Vidya Balan: To play someone, you don’t have to look like her

Shakuntala Devi, directed by Anu Menon, will hit OTT platform on July 31

Dressed in a lovely green dress, seated elegantly on a couch in the office room of her home, Vidya Balan greeted the Showtime team with her infectious laughter during the video call. She claims to have become a pro at finding different spots in her home to shoot videos and attend interview calls since the lockdown.

“Yea, I have run out of new spots to shoot in my house,” she laughs. “But you know, it’s been absolutely great spending time with my husband — I don’t get that too often — and I know every corner of my house now.”

Gearing up for the release of her biopic ‘Shakuntala Devi’ on Amazon Prime Video on July 31, the actress says she is talking “nineteen to the dozen” and nothing has changed when it comes to promotions. “You know, except for the fact that I’m talking in front of my iPad all the time, it’s pretty much the same.”

Shakuntala Devi, dubbed the “human computer”, was a remarkable woman. She was the first female mathematician in the country whose brilliance earned her a place in the 1982 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records. She wrote over 200 books in two years, including the first Indian book on homosexuality and a cooking guide for men.

Vidya says, “I was never intimated by numbers. I have never dealt with numbers after school and now we use phones for everything, but I was always good at remembering birthdays, phone numbers, car numbers and so on. So I actually have a very good relationship with numbers and that was rekindled with this film.”

Many who knew Shankuntala in person or have watched her interviews on YouTube would have noticed her South Indian accent. The trailer does not show much of that. Apparently, the creators took the liberty of adjusting Shakuntala’s accent as the film is in Hindi.

“We felt that it might become difficult for audiences across regions to understand so the accent was kept leaning towards English. However, the accent can be heard when she speaks English,” Vidya says.

Directed by Anu Menon, a majority of 'Shakuntala Devi' are women. “You actually don’t look at it as men and women when you come to work in a film. In fact, Shakuntala herself never described herself as a ‘female mathematician’. Having said that, our producer Vikram Malhotra will be very upset if we call this an all-only-women crew,” she laughs.

Not new to playing biopics (she was earlier in ‘Dirty Picture’ and ‘No One Killed Jessica’), Vidya has learnt a thing or two from those outings.

She explains, “I learnt that you have to be able to capture the essence of the person. You may not look like the person and it’ll be terrible to imitate that person. The attempt is to capture the essence which I have tried to do and I hope the audience can see that.”

While she is enjoying her time at home, the ‘Kahaani’ actress is anxious to see how the industry will unfold after the pandemic.

She did a photoshoot with a brand recently and dubbed at a studio for three days. She feels it is important to step out eventually and resume normal activities.

“I mean, how long can we go on like this? Having said that, we need to take all the necessary precautions and take care of ourselves,” she says.

'Shankuntala Devi' being her first OTT release, Vidya has no idea how to embrace this experience.

She says, “Usually, on the day of release, I pretend nothing has happened. It’s the day when you get the numbers of how well your movie has done. But this time, I honestly don’t know how it’s going to be!”

The nepotism debate

“It’s the reality of across every industry, not just in the films. It’s not a preserve of an illegal industry, so what’s the problem,” she asks.

“Yes, it’s heartbreaking that you lose the opportunity because they are related to someone or the other but it doesn’t bother me. I have never let it affect me. I can wish it away but is it going to go away? I’d rather adapt to that. If they want to choose someone else, so be it. It’s not a defeatist attitude, it’s more of a live and let live motto,” says Vidya.