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Meghna Gulzar ‘Found’ Malti In The First Prosthetics Session With Deepika Padukone: Chhapaak
Meghna Gulzar is bringing to us a heart-wrenching story of suffering and triumph through her film on acid attack, Chhapaak. The film will star Deepika Padukone as Malti, an acid attack survivor, whose characterization has been inspired by real life survivor Laxmi Agarwal.
For Meghna, this was an important story to be told as she believes that the issue of acid attacks is not being discussed as much as it should be. She also revealed that they found Malti in the first prosthetics session that Deepika sat for.
Talking to Mid-Day, Meghna explained the reason behind wanting to tell this story. She said, "The frequency of this violent act [acid attack] is high, but the awareness around it is abysmally low. The dialogue around this has to be brought into public consciousness."
Meghna had to gain the trust of Laxmi Agarwal, upon whom this story is based. "I wanted to make her story the anchor as it was a landmark case," she said. She also revealed that it took her over a month to reach her. When they did meet her, Laxmi was apprehensive about the way in which the story would be treated, as she didn't want it to be like a scandalous thriller. But it took Meghna some time to win her faith.
Meghna has stated before that it was important for her to cast a face of beauty as Malti in the film. She said that Deepika was the first actor they approached for this role, and she said yes within ten minutes of hearing the script. She further added, "We didn't want to make her look like Laxmi. The idea was to show how Deepika's face would look, God forbid, had it been damaged by acid. It was spooky how we nailed the look during our first session with prosthetics. That day, we knew we had our Malti."
Chhapaak also stars Vikrant Massey alongside Deepika. The film is set for release on January 10, 2020.
