Heeramandi actress Sonakshi Sinha: ‘It was a surreal and an out-of-body experience to enter the world of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’

Sonakshi Sinha will be seen in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Heeramandi.

In last year’s police procedural crime thriller Dahaad, Sonakshi Sinha’s impressive act as a hard-as-nuts cop did not go unnoticed. The actress who made her debut with the superhit Dabangg in 2010 has had her share of arm-candy roles but in recent years, Sinha has been trying to delve into roles that require the actor part of her to be stimulated. Her upcoming project with Sanjay Leela Bhansali is proof of that.

In the filmmaker’s debut series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, the Kalank actress plays the role of Fareedan, a courtesan in the pre-independence era. Sinha says she is glad that she is getting to play such a variety of roles, especially on OTT where people are willing to take risks with women protagonists and stories which would otherwise not be able to find theatrical releases. “I try to do different roles because that’s what keeps me excited about my work - to go on set and be a different person every day,” she says, adding that it is an amazing time to be in the acting profession. “The OTT boom has opened up a lot of avenues and the audience has become much bigger,” she says.

Although she would have loved to see Bhansali’s epic saga of love, betrayal and freedom on the big screen, she believes that the upside of an OTT release ensures that someone sitting in Australia or the USA would also be able to watch their show with just the click of a button at home.

The shooting of Heeramandi started right after Dahaad and the shoot of her film Double XL for which the actress had to put on a lot of weight. “I had to lose all the weight from Double XL to get into shape for Fareedan!” she laughs. Sinha adds that she had been waiting for a period drama to add to her filmography. “It is so exciting to be part of an era you have never known and to live that for so many days,” she says, calling it a “surreal and an out-of-body experience”.

The actress says she is in awe of Bhansali’s attention to detail. “From the correct tablecloth to the curtains to the tea cup and spoon - the details are too much to take in. The clothes we wore, the jewellery – you just get transformed into the person you are supposed to be playing onscreen and that was the beauty of it from the very first day,” she says about the filmmaker who is known for the scale and grandeur in his projects, with films such as Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999), Devdas (2002), Bajirao Mastani (2015) and Padmaavat (2018), among others.

The filmmaker is also known to be a stickler for hard work and dedication. So, is a Bhansali set more serious than the others? “Only when sir is around!” laughs Sinha. On a serious note, the actress says that criticism from him is more than welcome. “He has such a solid vision of what he wants to create that he does not want to stray even a bit away from it and that is fair. He’s done this kind of work for so many years to demand that dedication from everyone,” she elaborates.

Apart from Sinha, the cast also includes Manisha Koirala, Aditi Rao Hydari, Richa Chadha, Sanjeeda Shaikh and Sharmin Segal in the lead roles. “It was such a smooth, stress-free and drama-free experience!” says the actress, who added that it was beautiful to be acting alongside a veteran such as Koirala and a newcomer like Segal.

Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar is slated to release on May 1 on Netflix