When male actors in Bollywood break a sweat or have sniffles during a film promotion or making, they most often go gung-ho on social media about it with millions of likes, thirst texts and comments. Stars trend for days and hours with a single static picture. However, the women of Bollywood, don’t seem to follow suit, and quite commendably so.
In Amazon Prime Video’s upcoming film 'Chhorii,' eight-month pregnant Sakshi, played by Nushratt Bharuccha, must save herself and her unborn child from the evil within society and from the fear that lies in the paranormal world.
Nushratt wore a pregnancy suit for about a month to get into the character, and yet, never went bonkers on the internet about it. Speaking to Asian Voice, Nushratt said, “I've never been somebody who can really scream on top of my lungs for things. I can't be the one obsessed with it or full of it. If you didn't ask me how I prep for the film I would probably not speak about it. It’s my prep. It's personal to me.”
In one of her old interviews back in 2019, the actress said that “...his (her then co-star Kartik Aaryan’s) trajectory will always be more glorified, and would seem larger than mine. Just being aware of where I am, makes things easy for me, I'm happy with my journey.”
Two years later, Nushratt has received accolades from audiences for her performance in Netflix’s 'Ajeeb Daastaans' and has some big movies lined up in the near future, one of which is 'Ram Setu' with Akshay Kumar.
Standing by her previous statement even today, Nushratt said, “I will stand by this statement even today. Because if a male actor is doing something on OTT, his trajectory even on OTT will be more glorified than mine. And that's just a fact. The reason I said I'm happy with my reality is that the disappointment of it, or the over expectation of things that are not going to change, are what they are.
“I walked into this field knowing what they are. I walked into this field saying, ‘Okay, I'm going to age here’. And we'll be 40 and 50 and 60 here. My ambition and goals are not to reach a certain level of glorification.”
The actress also mentioned that the director of Ajeeb Daastaans walked up to her and offered her the role, keeping her in mind and that she didn’t have to ask for it, which is very promising for her career.
'Chhorii' was shot during the pandemic and there were strict protocols that were put in place by the producers to safeguard the crew. Nushratt in fact rented an apartment away from her parents and grandma to protect them from any kind of potential exposure to the virus. Chhorii is shot in live locations, mostly without a green screen and interestingly, Nushratt hadn’t read the script. So when her co-actors would be rehearsing or reading the script, she’d be away in her own bio bubble.
With the success of films like 'Pari' and 'Bulbull', 'Chhorri' might flourish and have a better shelf life on OTT than most other films in this genre. Commenting on that, the actress said, “I'm very happy that it has a sort of longer shelf life for people to go back and watch it or people who missed it to watch it again or watch it at a different time at their leisure. For me specifically, I'm like a film buff. The first thing I say is, well, I get to watch it. And if the answer is an OTT platform, then that's the best. Because I'm just going to sit back in my bedroom, put it on and quietly binge on that film. It could be a really old film, which was released years back but an OTT platform has acquired it and has it on a slate. So that access for me I think is a great boon for films across all platforms. I feel like whichever genre films it's a great boon.”
