Radhika Madan is kicked about her film debut even as she gears up to take her follow-up film to the ongoing Toronto Film Festival on Friday
Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 12, 2018)

Radhika Madan who played the lead in Ekta Kapoor’s telly soap, Meri Aashiqui Tum Se Hi, was to make her Bollywood debut with Ronnie Screwvala’s action-comedy, Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota, opposite Bhagyashree’s son Abhimanyu Dassani. But since that film is still in post-production, she will now be introduced by National Award-winning filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj in his upcoming directorial Pataakha, which also features Dangal girl Sanya Malhotra and Sunil Grover.

“Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota has a lot of action and editing takes time. I’m happy with both films and ready to start my journey with either. Pataakha is a Vishal Bhardwaj film, a dream!” the actress exults.

Radhika informs that she had auditioned for Pataakha while shooting with Abhimanyu for the Vasan Bala directorial last December. “I was told they would get back to me by May-June. I wrapped up Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota in February and went to Goa to celebrate when I got a call from Vishal sir’s team saying he wanted to meet me and see me enact some scenes. I booked the next flight back to Mumbai and was rehearsing the scenes at Goa airport, trying to get used to the dialect. I caught people around looking at me strangely but I didn’t care,” she reminisces with a laugh.

Prod her on the extensive prep to convincingly play a girl from a village in the interiors of Rajasthan, which required her to live in the village for a while and learn the chores, and she says she didn’t think twice before moulding the cow dung into cakes and plastering the walls with them. Her diligence paid off.

“I recently went to a party with Sanya after the trailer released and everyone was lauding her, not even acknowledging my presence. This was beginning to offend me when Sanya went off to meet another guest and the person we had been chatting with suddenly started praising the ‘other girl’, saying she was fab and didn’t look like a debutante. When I told him that girl was me, he refused to believe me. That was the biggest compliment I could get as an actor,” Radhika smiles with satisfaction.

In the film, Sanya and she play warring sisters. She shared a similar relationship with her brother who is four years older. “I would try out my WWE moves on him when I was young and he couldn’t hit back since I was the younger sister. I got to relive all that with Sanya on screen. During the fights, we forgot about the technicalities and in one scene I actually kicked her hard, while in another she slapped me. Neither of us protested because we were in character. In fact, we would hug each other for about 20 minutes after these shots, apologising profusely,” she smiles fondly.

Radhika will leave for Canada shortly. Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota is being screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in the ‘Midnight Madness’ section on September 14. “Since we started working on this film, we wanted to take it to festivals; being selected for TIFF is exhilarating. I’m excited to walk the red carpet though I’m still contemplating what to wear. Maybe a tuxedo…” she muses.