Sit With Hitlist: Alia Bhatt reveals she was not offered 'Udta Punjab'; Pankaj Tripathi prepped her for the role

Alia Bhatt in Udta Punjab

Alia Bhatt made her acting debut in 2012 with the film 'Student Of The Year'. But it was films like 'Highway' and 'Udta Punjab' at the early stage of career that got her appreciation as an actor. In the 2016 film, 'Udta Punjab', Alia essayed the role of Kumari Pinky, a migrant labourer, in the film. She was hailed for her performance. However, she was never offered the part. She went up to the director Abhishek Chaubey and had to convince him to cast her. In an exclusive chat with Mid-day's Sit With Hitlist, Alia spoke about how she landed 'Udta Punjab' and how she prepped for one of the most challenging roles of her career.

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Recalling the time she came across the script of 'Udta Punjab', Alia said, "Shahid and I were shooting for 'Shaandaar' at the time. He told me about the script and that it is such a good script and he wants me to read it. Maybe he wanted my advice on it or maybe he was going to suggest me for this part, I don't know. Shahid and I had become very good friends and he had asked me to just read the script. I read the script and I was like 'Wow, what a part'. I was like, 'listen I want to do this part'. He was like, 'Okay, I also think it will be quite cool and you should meet Chaubey'. So then I met Chaubey and I had to convince him that I will do it. He was like I am still realigning because he had a certain image of me in his mind where she is this young girl, heroine because I had done those kinds of films, although I had done a film like 'Highway'. For Chaubey to reimagine me as that character was a big thing. He had to sleep on it. So we did a look test and he was still not sure. I said I will work very hard and I will really prove myself but I really want to play this part. I wanted to prove to myself and the world that I am a chameleon."

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Alia also revealed that she had prepped for the character for a month along with actor Pankaj Tripathi. Talking about the same, she said, "Pankaj Tripathi has always been an extremely reputed and loved actor, But this is before he broke into the movie scene. He was very loved in theatre and generally and reputed amongst actors. But the Pankaj Tripathi wave that came, it came after that. So I got the opportunity to get one month of his time. So Pankaj sir along with Chaubey and myself would sit and work on the dialogues every day. My character does not speak much in 'Udta Punjab'. When she spoke, it was the pure Jhat dialect. So we worked on that, different workshops on body language. He taught me to sit and speak the way the natives do. Then he made me do a lot of acting workshops, how to loosen the body, a certain expression which is dead eyes, open mouth. But there is so much intricacy inside the eye, there is so much depth and so much pain. Udta Punja was the first film that I kind of went method on. I didn't take a phone to set. I just had one device to stay in touch with my family and there were days when I was not shooting and I would not have any entertainment."