Deepika Padukone is gearing up to grace the silver screen with Meghna Gulzar’s Chhapaak in January 2020, after she was last seen in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Padmaavat in 2018. Chhapaak tells the story of an acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal, and Deepika will be seen essaying her character. Deepika at the 21st Mumbai Film Festival 2019 aka MAMI, got candid about her upcoming film and also stated that so far Chhapaak has been the toughest movie of the career.
She spoke about how she up till now thought that working in a Sanjay Leela Bhansali movie was emotionally exhausting for her given the character she played and everything else that into its making. But that changed for her after she worked on Chhapaak. As in this movie, Deepika will be seen in prosthetics to get the perfect look. She also revealed that the entire process wasn’t a cakewalk, but quite exhausting as it took nearly three hours to complete the look. She said, “With Chhapaak, the process was exhausting, of having to get the prosthetics done for like three hours and another hour to take it off. Emotionally I have never been as burnt out as I felt after that.”
Deepika also admitted that it wasn’t easy for her to get over the character. She was so emotionally drained after completing Chhapaak, she literally on the last day of the shoot burnt her prosthetic make up. She said, “I watched it burn and I stood there as I needed to see it burn completely to a point where I didn’t even want to see the shape of the eyes, nose. I wanted everything to become ash. I stood there till that entire process was over and only then I felt a part of it had left my system, my body. But it’s not entirely possible as none of these characters leave your system. As of now, this has been the toughest film I’ve done.”
Deepika currently has completed the filming of Kabir Khan’s ’83 where she will be seen starring opposite husband Ranveer Singh. ’83 will tell the story of the Indian cricket team’s historic victory at the 1983 World Cup.