Rani Mukerji gets upclose and personal!

Rani Mukerji gets candid about her career, her craft and her latest stint on the big screen.

As an actor, are you consciously trying to bite into juicier and meatier roles?
Before Saathiya, acting was just a job for me. It became a passion when I realised that filmmaking is more than just earning your bread and butter. I had to cut down on the number of films I was doing to focus on two films instead of 10 in a year. Today, I’m giving each film 100-150 days. As an actor, I want to do different roles to get me out of my comfort zone and push the envelope. It’s not like I decided that today Aamir Khan is coming to offer me Talaash and tomorrow Anurag Kashyap is coming to me with an Aiyyaa… things fall in my lap, if they are interesting enough, I grab them.

How important are your co-stars?
Work is much easier when your co-stars smell nice and especially if it is a romantic role, the first essence is smell. And in that observation, Shah Rukh smells the best, just for your information.

Was your weight ever an issue?
We women have hormones that start screaming at a certain age, we are made that way (laughs). I have seen my father’s health deteriorate over time because of certain reasons. So, I give a lot of importance to health. And it isn’t as if being a certain size makes you look sexy. By healthy, I mean you exercise everyday, eat right, do yoga so that you look young... people should always try guessing your age.

But has your weight come in the way of getting a role?
I think I have been really lucky, because people found me cute and hot when I was chubby too. Yeah, but it is was not like how today actors put on weight for certain roles. I was naturally fat. I can’t say that I had worked on it (smirks).

Tell us more...
Back then I was just an excited newcomer who was doing well in life. When you are young, you just take advantage of your age. Eating at odd hours, having sugary tea. Today, I don’t do that. I have green tea (raises her cup).

You have changed your look and image as and when the role demanded it. Has that been a conscious decision then?
Your state of mind at the time, dictates the kind of films you want to do. Like if I am in a happy space or a not-so-happy space, my choice of scripts become very integral at that point of time. Because I get attracted to a particular type of film depending on my mood. Sometimes, a really dramatic film can bore me because I want to do something funny or something lighter. And sometimes comedy seems superficial and very floozy. And, finally it depends on the script. The better the script, the more the greed I have as an actor to do the role.

So what was your state of mind when you said yes to Aiyyaa?
I had just finished shooting for Jessica. And I had already signed Talaash, which was a high- energy thriller. There was a space in my mind and heart to do something lighter. Not that I had to look for a funny or a comic film necessarily. But Aiyyaa came to me at the right time. Luckily, I was looking at doing a romantic comedy. I do get attracted to that genre of romantic comedy. But obviously, one can’t repeat oneself. Aiyyaa, being a romantic comedy, had to have the right ingredients for me to accept it. In this film, my director has got a new angle to love — you can fall in love with somebody’s smell. That intrigued me. Sachin being a regional film maker, he came with his individualistic approach to film making. And he has brought about a different style of story-telling. I wouldn’t like to say that this character was a cake walk for me to slip in. There is a lot of fun when there is a film that requires the actor to prepare…it’s a very interesting process and I’d like to go through it in every film I do.

Each of your characters, be it Tina, Suhani, Shashi or Meenakshi, stay with the audience. What goes into preparing for the character?
As an actor my job is to observe. I like to observe. For me preparation is what I remember from my observations. Like today although I am giving an interview here, but I am also observing you all. In life, I take that inspiration and put that observation into my role. A month before I start shooting, I sit with my director, try to understand how he has visualised the character on the screen and take notes. Then I start working on the most basic thing — the look. In fact, as you mentioned these names, you remember them because of the look mostly. It’s very important that the physical appearance of the character gets decided because if I look the character, it makes it all the more believable. Once that is achieved, I go into the finer nuances of what the girl is like, her background. Though you wouldn’t see that in the film, the before and after of the character is very important. And then from there, if the character is from UP, I have to get the accent right. Puneri girls speak in a very different way, their Hindi and English is very accented. I need to go through the script and say each word the way Meenkashi Deshpande (Aiyyaa) would speak. Sometimes it seems so effortless, that people don’t even notice the hard work behind it, for them it’s just Meenakshi Deshpande.

How did you come to develop this process?
When I came into the industry I was just 16. At that time, I didn’t know what I was doing. My mother asked me to be an actress and I just said yes and the process started. Film after film, I got lucky. And as a young teenager, it was very exciting to be earning money and keeping my parents happy. My approach to films was like I’d go to school or college. I was eating regular stuff at the shoot and I was putting on weight, and as it is I was chubby. One of the films I did back then was Hey Ram where I worked with Kamal Haasan. I found the environment very different and disciplined. And it was very taxing. In Hindi movies, I was having fun wearing good clothes and speaking my lines pat pat, learning them like I used to learn geography and literature. Even when I did Ghulam and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, I was more enamoured by Shah Rukh and Aamir as mega stars. I knew that this job required hard work, but there was no passion. I was doing films but I had no love for films. With Hey Ram that started changing. And then the critics come into the picture to show you the mirror. I didn’t ever want to be this. I just happened to be an actor by chance. A lot of my films flopped at the time, and the newspapers had written me off. And that’s when I took notice of things. In my earlier films, you’ll see character kuch hai, kapde kuch hai. So then I took a eight-month break, people thought I had gone insane. I just put my foot down and said I’m not going to do films that do not have me as a central character. And then came Saathiya.