Exclusive interview: Penthouse actress Gayathiri Iyer: Casting directors have their own groups

Gayathiri Iyer (Photo courtesy/Siddhartha Mukherjee)

She was very studious in school and college and was absolutely not interested in anything to do with the film industry. In fact, she used to look down upon anything which was not related to academics. She was trained in classical music and classical dance at an early age and was part of the singing and dancing team for school events as well. As a career, actress Gayathiri Iyer was always inclined towards engineering. But as destiny would have it, she has now made a name for herself in the showbiz industry.

After making a mark in Sandalwood, Gayathiri has been part of mainstream Hindi films namely - Ajay Devgn-starrer Raid, Vikram Bhatt's Ghost and the series Haiwaan. Well, now she is all set for her fourth Hindi outing, Abbas-Mustan's next OTT film Penthouse, which stars Arjun Rampal and Bobby Deol.

As she is all excited for her next big Netflix original, we got Gayathiri chatty in this tell-all interview. Excerpts below:

It all began in college

"I was in my first year of college when we had these inter-college fashion shows and my then-boyfriend literally forced me to walk the ramp even though I was least interested. But that one ramp show changed my life. A model, who was a coordinator, saw me on the ramp during that show and he offered me several ads after that. I got my first film also because of that."

Her first film

"I remember myself being quite stupid when my first film offer came before I decided to act. When one of the very good directors in Tamil offered me a Tamil movie at that time, I didn't take it up. I was approached for a second lead actress' part, which was opposite one of the very popular actors. But instead, I asked him, "Please make me sing in your movie" and he was like "This girl is so mad". He kept asking me quite a few times and even tried to convince my mom and dad to make me act in his film. But my parents left it up to me as I was adamant. I was like "No way! I want to sing. I don't want to act". Eventually, the director just gave up on me. He obviously was not looking for a singer, he was looking for an actress and he just thought that I'm a hopeless case and he just left it. So I remember I was that stupid. But when I finally did my first film as an actress, I realised how addictive acting was for me and how I could do it for even 36 hours at a stretch without feeling tired or bored. That sealed it for me and I was like I can't do anything else when I know how acting in front of the camera feels. Every day I try to better myself and see great actors perform and try to learn a bit every day from the screen and from real people around me too."

Her Bollywood journey

"Raid (starring Ajay Devgn and Saurabh Shukla) was one of the first Bollywood films for which I had auditioned for! Getting a chance to audition for good Hindi films is not easy because most casting directors have their own groups from which they audition and cast. But luckily for me, the casting for Raid was being done by Shivam from Casting Bay. I didn't know them before and it was my first time meeting or auditioning for them. So you see, they didn't push their own set of favourites. At that time I didn't know that I was auditioning for an Ajay Devgan film or a T-Series movie. All I knew that it was for a Raj Kumar Gupta directorial and so I was very thrilled. A week before the shoot, I came to know about the cast and more details of the project."

Her tale of struggle

"Every day is a struggle in Bollywood. I am sure everyone has gone through their own struggle be it small or big. Even I went through a difficult phase when I decided to take up acting as a profession. I come from a very conservative family where acting and overall the showbiz industry is looked down upon. So when I took the decision to get into the acting field full-fledged, my family expressed their displeasure. For around four to five months, my entire family - Mom, dad and my brother were not speaking to me at all. I was staying all alone in Bangalore at that time, doing a bit of modelling and acting and for five whole months, I didn't get to speak to my family. And finally, on my birthday, I got a call from my mum. It was June, so it was from around January they hadn't been speaking to me. And on June 16, my mom called and you know she just broke down and even I started crying. That was my share of struggle, on the personal front. But, I still feel guilty for putting my family through so much for my passion, for the sake of my career. It's something that I still haven't been able to forgive myself for. I think that will always remain in my mind."

Working with Abbas-Mustan for Penthouse

"I feel it was a huge blessing for me to do an Abbas-Mustan film and that too a Netflix original, at this stage in my career because I am just three-films-old in Hindi. My first film was Raid with Raj Kumar Gupta, the second film was Ghost with Vikram Bhatt and then I did the TV show Haiwaan with Balaji. And now I have Penthouse with Abbas-Mustan. I think I've been pretty lucky that I've worked with all known directors, really renowned names in Bollywood. So getting my fourth project with this famous director duo was in itself a blessing. I was super nervous when I reached the set on the first day. But Abbas-Mustan are the most down to earth directors I have had ever worked with - be it in South or Bollywood. One thing that really struck me about them was after every pack up, they would get up from the monitor, walk all the way to where we actors are and say thank you to all of us. They are that humble! Quite unlike their films, Abbas-Mustan are the calmest and the humblest directors I have ever seen."