Kajol in her college girl avatar; as the mother (below; right)

From college student to single mother, actress spans decades in her next
Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 4, 2018) 

After featuring in Soundarya Rajinikanth’s Tamil action-comedy Velaiilla Pattadhari 2, alongside Dhanush last year, Kajol will next be seen in National Award-winning filmmaker Pradeep Sarkar’s Helicopter Eela which revolves around a mother and son, with the actress playing a single parent. Kajol moves from a collegian aspiring to be a singer to the mother of a teenager played by Riddhi Sen, who bagged the National Award for best actor for Kaushik Ganguly’s Bengali film, Nagarkirtan. The role spans from 1990 to 2018.

“Kajol, our stylist Radhika Mehra and I sat together and curated both looks. We even went back to some of Kajol’s earlier pictures for the younger part. The mind set was equally important as her character had to behave childishly earlier and mature with age. It was an interesting process of development,” informs Sarkar. The film is produced by Ajay Devgn and Jayantilal Gada.

Prod him on her prep and the director reveals, “Kajol plays the piano well so she has an innate understanding of rhythm and music which came in handy when she was playing the singer.”

The actress also got along famously with her onscreen son Riddhi who is a self-confessed Kajol fan and particularly loved her villainous avatar in Rajiv Rai’s Gupt. “The set was on fire when the two were around. They bonded with laughter and banter,” Sarkar says.