Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; January 16, 2019)

At stark contrast to the lifestyle she leads today, Bhumi Pednekar is set to play the role of a resident of Chambal for a film set in the ’70s. Understandably then, she had to isolate herself to acquire the demeanour of the character for Abhishek Chaubey’s dacoit-drama Sonchiriya, for a fair amount of time.

How much, you ask. “45 days,” she responds. “I isolated myself from the world for 45 days to understand the character. Acting is a process of metamorphosis; it’s about forgetting who one is and becoming someone else. For Sonchiriya, I needed isolation to do so. I cut off from the world to understand the psyche and behaviour of the person I was becoming.”

Interaction for Pednekar, she says, was restricted to her family members only. “I had to unlearn a lot to learn about her. I had little content to use as reference, and built on the material that I got from the script. I stayed at home, researched, and limited human interaction till I boarded my flight to Chambal.”

Having arrived in Chambal, the actor took to another week of isolation before working on her diction. It is heard she learnt Bundelkhandi.