‘I’m good at comedy’

Bollywood beauty Lara Dutta has already starred in several comedies, like No Entry,Bhagam Bhag, Partner and Do Knot Disturb.

Now, the former Miss Universe is prepared to continue that trend, with yet another comedy,Housefull.

The film tells the story of Aarush, played by Akshay Kumar, who believes that his bad luck will change only after he finds true love.

Housefull is directed by Sajid Khan, and represents his second turn in the director’s chair, following 2007 hit Heyy Babyy.

It’s a multi-starrer, featuring Riteish Deshmukh, Deepika Padukone, Jiah Khan, Arjun Rampal, Boman Irani, Randhir Kapoor and Chunkey Pandey alongside Lara and Akshay.

In an interview with Patcy N, Lara describes working with Sajid Khan, tells us why she does so many comedies, and gives her thoughts on the Bollywood of today.

Tell us about your character.

She lives and studies in London, and also works in a casino there. She doesn’t know much Gujarati, but her heart is very Indian. Her father, played by Boman Irani, lives in Ahmedabad and speaks proper Gujarati. So whenever her father calls, he has to listen to her answering machine, which has a voice message in Gujarati. She falls in love with a non-Gujarati and marries him, and her only wish in life is that her father accepts her husband.

How was playing a Gujarati girl?

During the very initial scripting period, Sajid was tossing around the idea of what my character should be: a Parsi, a Gujarati or a Punjabi. I am bored of playing Punjabi characters, so I told him not to make her Punjabi. Sajid later decided that the character should be Gujarati and should speak in Gujarati too. He named her Hetal. I found the name very funny. In fact, all the names of charcters in the film are funny, like Batuk Patel. But since the film is in Hindi, we have not used too much Gujarati, just simple dialogues that the regular Hindi-speaking crowd can also understand.

So did you have to learn Gujarati?

I learnt quite a lot. When I was dubbing, we had a Gujarati artist come in to help me with the pronunciations, to make sure that they came out well. It was great fun. Boman is very fluent in Gujarati, so when he would start saying his dialogue in Gujarati, he would forget that the film is in Hindi and take off. Sajid would then have to tell him, ‘Boman, it is not a Gujarati film.’

So do you have Gujarati looks too?

My look in the film is very modern, as my character stays in London and works there too. She is very savvy and loves to carry designer bags. She is not rich, but she is stylish.

Image: Lara Dutta

Photographs: Manav Manglani/Reuters

Source by Rediff

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