‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’ actress Patralekhaa feels overwhelmed being in the limelight after a decade of hard work. “I was not expecting this, honestly,” she says. In an exclusive interaction with mid-day.com, Patralekhaa gets candid about starring in the Anubhav Sinha directorial web series that garnered rave reviews. She speaks about her most-talked-about scenes, and how the show impacted her mentally and physically.
Patralekhaa was not offered ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’
Patralekhaa says, “I wasn`t offered the show. I went after Mr. Sinha. I knew he was writing the script. I met him and was like, ‘I want a part in the show’. He said, ‘Yaar abhi toh main kuch nahi bol sakta ho, kyunki main bas likh raha hoon, uh, isko pakne de dekhte hai’. Then every month I kept following up with him. I`m sure he must have gotten a little irritated with me.”
“We did the technical prep and the training, but Anubhav Sir doesn’t like doing the usual reading with his actors. He believes in sitting at a table, eating food, conversing with you, and slowly easing you into it,” she adds.
Patralekhaa on shooting in a cramped space
The actress labels the experience “claustrophobic”. She recalls shooting with a hundred junior artists, the technical and camera team, and how one of them caught a viral that just went around. “My nose was running continuously. I had a 101-degree fever. The feeling was not good. God forbid we`ll never be in a hijack. But that situation is not a good situation to be in. Just imagine sitting on those seats which are anyway so uncomfortable to sit even for a couple of hours. The toilet is running out. It`s quite traumatic.”
Patralekhaa speaks about the slap scene
For those who have watched the show, Harry Parmar, who plays one of the terrorists slaps Patralekhaa. When asked about the same, she explains, “He was a little nervous about the scene and he came and spoke to me about the slap two, three days before.
And he`s like, ‘No, no, I won`t do it. I`ll do it like this. You can turn your face.’ And then Anubhav sir was like, ‘No, no, why?’, then I was like, ‘Yeah, don`t do that, Harry. We will do it as it is,’ and I convinced him. But I feel like for a man, it`s really difficult to hit a woman. I had to ease him out into the situation. And the day we were shooting this, we did the first take, and we did another take. It was done. Also, it`s good, na? The impact is more. Do thappad pade aur khatam na scene.”
Patralekhaa’s biggest takeaway from ‘IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack’
“Human beings are just amazing. They don`t lose. In the face of adversities, they`re fighting, They`re navigating through it. For Indrani`s character also, there`s so many things layers happening and yet when it comes to her duty, she`s doing it. Yet she`s completely terrorized. But the will to live, the determination and the grit is what I take back,” concludes Patralekhaa.