Anurag and I have a bond of trust: Surveen Chawla
Kavita Awaasthi
For Surveen Chawla, working with film-maker Anurag Kashyap is like hanging out with a friend. She starred in his directorial Ugly (2013) and was recently seen with him in Tisca Chopra’s short film where he acted alongside her. The actor says, “Anurag and I bonded on a very profound level. We shared a bond of trust while working in Ugly. We had many long chats, not just about the film, but about life in general. I think the true give-and-take between a director and an actor is of trust, which was possible between us. I delivered the scenes the way he wanted, and he had faith in me as well. It was an enriching experience. The same thing happened with Leena (Yadav) when she directed me in Parched (2015). There are these two times when my bonding with my directors has been far deeper than usual.”
The film-maker will soon direct Surveen in a web series that also stars Saif Ali Khan. She says, “Anurag and I don’t meet or chat often, but when we do, we pick up from where we left off. We are the same people and a friends as always. We acted in the short film [together] thanks to Tisca, who thought we could be paired. She told me that she was thinking about casting him, and later when Anurag and I talked about it, we realised that we had both thought about the making out scene in the film during the narration, and we were rolling on the floor laughing about it. It was so funny that we would have to do that.”
Surveen also says Anurag “can take a joke”. She says, “He was jittery and nervous about acting, and I was relishing that he would get a taste of his own medicine — getting instructions from director on a scene, especially intimate ones.”