Actor Richa Chadha initially turned to gin to lend authenticity to a “drunk dancing” scene in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi, but she quickly found that alcohol impeded her performance by making her movements lethargic. Despite being a teetotaler, Richa attempted to drink on the first day of filming the dance number after struggling with 30-40 takes without achieving the desired effect.
In an interview with Zoom, Richa recounted the experience, saying, “On the first day, I wasn’t getting it, to do the drunk dancing. So, after 30-4o takes, I thought let me have a quarter and see what happens. I did have some gin. I drank a little bit, but it made things worse. I didn’t want that lethargy in the body movement, I wanted some of it, maybe the precision can go but I didn’t want to let go of the grace.”
She soon realized that she was better at portraying drunkenness without actually consuming alcohol, which allowed her more control over her dance and overall performance. Richa explained that her extensive background in a culture rich with poetry, music, and dance helped her to mimic intoxication convincingly, “If you have grown up in that world, with poetry, music and dance, it is going to be your second nature. So, I tried drinking on the first day of my solo song, but it didn’t work for me. I was better off pretending to be drunk than actually getting a little tipsy. It is a technical job, no matter how much I dance, my dress is so heavy, I have to hit that mark, interact. It was fun for me to do,” she added.
Richa reflected on her method acting limits during the shoot, emphasizing her total commitment to her role in every scene, which required intense concentration and discipline, especially given the heavy costumes and complex choreography. “I can safely say that for every scene I have done on this show, and I know there aren’t too many, I was 100 percent into it. I was not distracted while giving cues also to someone else, I was not out of character even when I was dancing. It took a lot from me, but I loved it,” she shared.
Heeramandi is set against the backdrop of the pre-Independence era in the 1940s. It explores the cultural reality of a prominent red-light district through the lens of courtesans and nawabs. The series boasts a star-studded cast, including Manisha Koirala, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditi Rao Hydari, Richa Chadha, Sanjeeda Sheikh, and Sharmin Segal.
News18 gave Showsha 4.5 stars and wrote, “Bhansali pens a near-perfect screenplay, and it is this rich writing that already forms an impressive foundation for the show. Each character is written with a lot of courage, empathy, and sensitivity. Here, each female character is so well-fleshed out, including those in the periphery, that they all deserve a spin-off of their own.”
It further read, “With Heeramandi, Sanjay Leela Bhansali creates a world that’s exquisite and is rich and vibrant in its culture and texture. Inhabiting this realm are some characters that are as unapologetic, complex, and imperfect as a human can be. Here, the women call their own shots and is unafraid of what the civil society might think of them. They’re pitted against each other, sometimes one even wishing for and conspiring against another’s downfall and shattering their self-worth, pride and ego. They can tear apart and even love like tigresses. And when the right time comes, they don’t bat an eyelid before fiercely protecting one another. Despite deep and dark ambition plaguing their hearts, they’ve their conscience clear. Maybe that’s why Fareedan in a scene reprimands a British officer for robbing her aunt Mallikajaan off her ‘aabru’ when all she wanted was for her to have her ‘guroor’ crumbled.”
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