Exclusive- Vidya Balan shares how she & Shefali Shah are similar; calls Pratik Gandhi ‘easy to work with’

It was exciting news for audiences when makers of Jalsa announced that Vidya Balan and Shefali Shah, two power house actors, will be coming together for the thriller. The result was as expected-- an incredible film with phenomenal performances by two of Bollywood’s finest, most passionate artists. While Vidya and Shefali did not have many scenes together, they blew us away with their versatility, expressions and body language. Vidya portrayed the role of journalist Maya Menon with precision whereas Shefali breathed life into the character of her son’s caretaker Rukhsana.

In an exclusive interview with Desimartini, when Vidya was asked about her experience of working with Shefali, she shared, “Fantastic, to say the least, you know. I have long admired her as an actor and I’m so glad I got an opportunity to work with her. Not enough, but at least we got an opportunity to work together and we did some wonderful scenes together-- the scene in the kitchen, the gas scene, is one of my favoritist scenes in the film. And what I absolutely love about her is how madly passionate she is about acting. I love that. I think that’s a similarity we share.”

The beauty also opened up about how Shefali is finally getting her due thanks to the digital platform. Vidya stated, “It’s fantastic because Shefali Shah, I always believed that Shefali Shah deserved to be amongst the busiest actors, you know. But obviously she keeps saying that for a long time she wasn’t getting the kind of roles that excited her. But thankfully because of the OTT revolution there are exciting roles being written for an actor like her. And you know, therefore its fantastic. But she’s been brilliant even in the films she’s done. Even in television, so the medium doesn’t matter. Shefali will always be, you know, brilliant at whatever she does.”

Exclusive- Vidya Balan on massy entertainers: ‘I’d love to do the female version of Rohit Shetty ’s cop films’ 

Talking about her next co-star Pratik Gandhi, who is also ruling the digital medium much like Shefali, Vidya revealed, “Pratik was wonderful to work with. Of course we’d only seen him in Scam before I worked with him, but he’s done a lot of theatre, he’s done Gujarati films. So he’s also a very, matlab he was so easy to work with.” For the uninitiated, Vidya and Pratik will be seen together in Shirsha Guha Thakurta’s upcoming romantic comedy-drama. Also starring Ileana D' Cruz and Sendhil Ramamurthy, the film was announced in November last year.