Neena Gupta on Dil Dosti Aur Dogs: 'I have never played such a character'

After exploring comedy with Dil Dosti Aur Dogs, veteran actor Neena Gupta has the Vadh sequel, Panchayat’s fourth season, and Anurag Basu’s Metro… In Dino

Neena Gupta feels her life, currently, is a long-running dream. The National Award-winning actor has as many as four diverse stories to tell in the coming months. Not just that, she is also enjoying the precious position of being able to say no to what doesn’t feel right. “When [good] work comes, I take it up. When it goes to someone else, I feel bad. Now, I am able to say no to projects I don’t enjoy listening to. That makes me very happy. Earlier, I couldn’t because I had to survive,” she smiles. Gupta begins the year with the JioHotstar film, Dil Dosti Aur Dogs, in which the actor plays an emotionally withdrawn woman, who finds an unlikely companion in a furry friend. The actor says she relished entering an unfamiliar territory. “I have never played such a character. It was a big challenge and interesting for me to do,” she says.

A still from Dil Dosti Aur Dogs

Dil Dosti Aur Dogs also offered the actor another opportunity in the comedy space. It’s a genre Gupta has often taken up over her four decade career—from the classic Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983) to her hit OTT outing Panchayat. The actor says comedy is the trickiest genre, which needs the hands of an able director. “Not everyone is gifted with comic timing and you cannot acquire it. The director has a big role to play in this. If you fall on the wrong note, no one can help you. Long ago, I had replaced an actor on a comedy show. I was told that I had to take it two notes higher that what I was performing on. The pitch of the show was loud. I was so unhappy doing it, but I agreed because that was their style. One has to adapt to various directors. That way, Panchayat is amazing because it is so real that we don’t have to do anything,” says Gupta, who has just finished filming the fourth season of the Prime Video series. 

The year will also see the senior actor in director Anurag Basu’s romantic drama, Metro… In Dino, which also stars Konkona Sensharma, Pankaj Tripathi, Sara Ali Khan, Aditya Roy Kapur, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Ali Fazal and Anupam Kher. Gushing about her maiden collaboration with Basu, she says, “I keep asking him, ‘When are you casting me next?’ Mostly, my segment in the film is with Anupam Kher, but we aren’t playing a couple. We shot in Kolkata and Mumbai. There was so much spontaneity and improvisation on the set. It was great fun as well as a learning,” says Gupta. 

She recently finished filming the sequel to her 2022 thriller, Vadh. And now, her eyes set on something more athletic. “I want to do an action film or a spy thriller. I also want to play a glamorous, cool woman. There was a project in the action space that had come my way. I also had a double role in it but it didn’t work out due to financial reasons. It might work out tomorrow, who knows. I had gotten offered a spy film as well, but that also didn’t materialise. But that’s something I am inclined towards.”

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