There’s a whole lot of Priyanka Chopra in the coming week. In close succession, the actor has a film release, Barfi! as well as the launch of a single from her new music venture. The actor was in town recently to promote Barfi!. Directed by Anurag Basu and starring Ranbir Kapoor, the light-hearted romantic comedy sees Priyanka play the autistic Jhilmil. And ‘In My City’, a single from her upcoming music album, will be launched soon. The track, which features rapper will.I.am, will debut in the US today where she will be the featured artist at a football game kickoff.
“ Barfi! was all fun,” she declared, at an interview. Portraying autism wasn’t easy initially, but once she got the hang of it, things went smoothly. While she had done her research — meeting autistic children and “a whole lot of homework,” she said — once the camera came on, she was quite blank initially.
“I’m really nervous,” she said of her musical venture; this, despite her having sung earlier, in the 2002 Tamil film Thamizhan . This time around, her audience is much more international. And while she isn’t making plans for a move to singing, say, playback for Bollywood, she’s open to future opportunities, and indeed, sees her album as a new prong to her show business career.
Despite her pageant-backed entry to the film world — she won the Miss World in 2000, and acted in her first film in 2002 — she hasn’t necessarily had it easy, she claims. She was still a newcomer, foreign to the family-networked world of Bollywood. “I had to learn on the job. It wasn’t just that I didn’t come from a film family; I didn’t know people, I had no friends. It’s a strange dichotomy, because I never had to struggle, to go out there and look for films.” After her Bollywood debut with The Hero: Love Story Of A Spy in 2003, she had a slew of offers coming her way.
Since she’s less than a decade old in the Bollywood industry, she doesn’t count herself an old-timer, but she’s seen the industry change. “Cinema shouldn’t change so much in such a short time, but it has. It’s a great time to be a young actor today.” This atmosphere especially helps her because she enjoys doing a variety of roles: mainstream ‘heroine’ archetypes, as well as slightly offbeat ones. Priyanka gravitates to the “outlandish” roles as much as to what she calls the heroine stereotypes. “I like being a heroine. I like doing the dancing, all of that.”
But she also likes the option of challenging roles, such as in Saat Khoon Maaf . “I guess it’s about putting yourself out there to take a risk. Now, I can pick any kind of part. I don’t have to fit myself into the stereotype of a heroine. I can do that, and at the same time, I can do things like Barfi! . This couldn’t happen when I started.”
With Aitraaz , the 2004 thriller in which she played a negative role, Priyanka had been warned that the film wouldn’t take off, since female-heavy films would not do well. But that’s changing now: she lists Vidya Balan’s recent appearances in The Dirty Picture and Kahaani as proof. “Today, female-oriented films are happening. At least they’re getting made. So it’s a cool time to be in films.”
She’s enthused by Barfi! ’s light-hearted storyline, especially since it treats the differently-abled in a unique way. “Differently-abled people are portrayed in two ways; one is where it’s a caricature of their disability, for comic effect. Otherwise, the film is made to evoke sympathy. This film is neither. It’s all fun, sunshine, Roberto Benigni -Life Is Beautiful ,” she trails off.
