Shillong girl Andrea Tariang is all set to make her big Bollywood debut with Pink but the actress says she did not grow up watching Hindi films as she does not understand the language very well. Andrea prefers reading books over movies and is not fond of watching TV either, something which has baffled her friends ever since.
"I did not grow up watching Bollywood films because I don't understand Hindi that well. The only Bollywood movie I watched recently was Piku. That was before we shot for the film (Pink)," she said in an interview.
"I don't really watch movies. May be once I might have sat down to watch films with my mom when I was child. I read books, my friends usually ask me, 'how do you survive?' But I don't like watching TV that much," she added.
Andrea, along with Taapsee Pannu and Kirti Kulhari, plays one of three young women who face assault charges after being molested by a group of men in Pink. Her lack of understating Hindi very well did come across as a hindrance initially, especially while she was doing her workshops with her co-star Piyush Mishra, but Taapsee and Kirti were always a help.
"They helped me a lot. I used to ask them 'How do I do this, how do I say this' because there were quite a few dialogues I didn't understand especially when Piyush Mishra was speaking. He speaks so fast I couldn't understand what he was saying," she quipped.
The courtroom drama-thriller also stars megastar Amitabh Bachchan as their lawyer. Andrea, daughter of famous Shillong-based musician Rudy Wallang, shot her very first scene for Pink with Bachchan and ended up getting praised by him. "The biggest challenge for me were the cameras. There were so many around me when I was shooting and I was so scared. I was always nervous for the first few shoots that we did. My first shot was with Bachchan sir. I had just three words to say to him. My nervousness actually helped the scene because I had to look a little scared. We finished that shot in one take. He stood up and congratulated me."
Post, Pink, Andrea is keen to do more Bollywood films, "...that is if I can improve my Hindi first" but is also eager to sing for a film as she is unsure of how the music her band composes can fit in the Bollywood context.
Directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, Pink is produced by Rashmi Sharma and filmmaker Shoojit Sircar. It releases on September 16.
