Harshada Rege (DNA; February 2, 2019)

Tabu, who has acted with the senior bunch of B-Town stars in many of her films, shared screen space with Gen-Now actor Ayushmann Khurrana for the first time in AndhaDhun (2018). Like her, the Badhaai Ho actor, too, has picked films that are out-of-the-box and content-driven. No wonder, the Sriram Raghavan directorial, which had them outwitting each other on screen, saw them being in perfect sync off it. When we spoke to the actress about her experience of collaborating with the Shubh Mangal Saavdhan actor, she reminisced, “On the sets, everybody is in their character. Sometimes, you also get to interact with the person behind that character. Ayushmann was lovely to work with. He is unassuming about his process. He doesn’t make too much noise about it. He makes fun of the most serious things or breaks into a song. He likes to keep the atmosphere light. And you can’t see the effort that has gone into playing a complicated role like the one he had in AndhaDhun. In the film, at times, he pretends to be blind, then he is blind... and then playing the piano. I’m sure it was a huge task, but while doing so, he never gave out that vibe ke mein yeh sab kar raha hoon. He was enjoying himself.”

Like her co-star, who pens shayari and is a published author, Tabu, too, loves the written word. The actress told us that she would be interested in collaborating with a writer for a film. But work apart, she also jots down stuff for herself, which she hasn’t shared with her fans or the audience yet. “They are more like my thoughts. A bit of prose, experiences and observation,” she says. Any plans to get them published? “People are interested, but I’ve to select what I want to share with the world,” she says.