For her second film, Sanjana Sanghi has chosen the heavy-duty actioner Om: The Battle Within. While co-star Aditya Roy Kapur is familiar with the genre, thanks to Malang (2020), it was new territory for Sanghi after the romantic drama, Dil Bechara (2020). “Adi and I prepped together for months. I have performed all my stunts on my own. We didn’t have a reference point for the character of Kavya because no female character [in recent Hindi films] has done as much action,” she says.

Trying something new can be nerve-wracking as well as deeply satisfying. The actor acknowledges that the intense prep for Kapil Verma’s directorial venture has made her confident of tackling action films in the future. “Playing a leading action girl so early on in my career is a surreal feeling. I had never seen myself in this light. [Ahead of the shoot], I did weapon training and hand-to-hand combat so that I could pull off the stunts. I was recently dubbing for the film, and it felt great to see the sequences.”

The Ahmed Khan-backed movie, which went on floors in December 2020, is almost complete, save for a song. Collaborating with Kapur for the first time has been a learning experience. “Adi had pulled off action in Malang. I needed hand-holding because the genre of action requires a different skill set. He had to guide me through it.”