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Exclusive Interview! Vaibhavi Shandilya Opens Up About Chhatrasal, Shooting For Gaalipata In Kazakhstan & More
Vaibhavi Shandilya’s web series Chhatrasal is gaining solid popularity amongst the masses. The actress is creating waves across the internet with her impactful and impressive performance in the MX player series. Recently, Vaibhavi Shandilya had a candid chat with Filmibeat, in which she spoke about Chhatrasal, her upcoming Kannada film Gaalipata 2, the overwhelming love she’s been receiving from fans and much more. Here are excerpts from the interview.
Chhatrasal is being highly appreciated by critics as well as the audience. What kind of responses and reactions have you been receiving for your performance?
Personally, as of now, my social media is flooded with messages. People are loving the web series. So far, I have been working in the south industry in Tamil and Kannada films. I am used to getting messages in the southern languages. But for the first time, my DM’s are filled with Hindi messages and everybody is so happy with me playing Devkunwari, so it really feels good.
How did you prepare for your character Devkunwari? We hear you did you have done action in the series along with sword fighting
So, when our director called and told me that there is an entire sword sequence, we did a few days of workshops. Plus, lifting a sword is very heavy as a common man, I really didn’t know how heavy it would be. When I went on set and for the workshops, that’s when I held it and it was really heavy and I had to move my wrists and hands a certain way. So that’s when we gave it a couple of days for me to get used to it. And then, we shot the sequence. So, I mean, people are loving that scene the most from whatever responses I have been getting and people are re-sharing all those videos again and again.
We will soon get to see you in the Kannada film Gaalipata 2 alongside Ganesh. What can you tell us about the highly anticipated film and its release date?
About the release, I am not really sure because we are still filming some portions. In February of 2021, we just went to Kazakhstan to shoot the second half of the film. Actually, we were looking out for a nice European country but since Europe was all shut down, we chose Kazakhstan.
One of the major experiences of shooting for that film is like we shot in minus 19 degrees on a frozen lake. My fingers were all swollen and I was almost in tears. But we were having hot soup but nothing was working. But as an actor, you have to perform as well and I did give my best. But the outdoor went really well and even Yogaraj Bhat (director) sir came to me and said “well done Vaibhavi.” I was so happy to know that my director was really pleased with my work.
How has the COVID-19 crisis affected actors and what kind of changes have now come into place at work?
Not just actors, producers are also scared to make movies. We actors have actually been sitting at home in these COVID times. And whenever I go out shooting, I am so scared as we have to keep do makeup and hair. And that is the job that people have to do, like a thousand times in a day, we have to do touch up and different makeup and hair people are doing that for you.
So yes, it’s been hard. Earlier, we used to have 100 people working for the shoot in the crew. But now, it's come down to 30 people. When we went to Kazakhstan, we probably had only 10 people as crew members apart from the actors. Everybody has to give in a little during these critical times. We can’t be like we want this or that kind of treatment, or an extra assistant or something. You can’t say that.
