Ananya Panday says Shakun Batra ‘laughed in her face’ after Gehraiyaan crying scene, made her wonder if she was ‘awful’

Ananya Panday shared an anecdote from the making of Gehraiyaan and how director Shakun Batra’s behaviour after one of her intense scenes made her second-guess herself as an actor. She said that she ‘cried and cried’ in the scene and when she came out, he was ‘laughing in (her) face’.

Gehraiyaan also features Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi and Dhairya Karwa in the lead roles, with Naseeruddin Shah and Rajat Kapoor in supporting roles. The film is about the complexity of modern relationships.

In an interview with Film Companion, Ananya said, “There was this scene where I really had to cry and put all my emotions. I was like, ‘This is my big scene.’ I marked it in the script. I was like, ‘Today is going to be the day.’ I have gone in, it was just me alone, Shakun was sitting outside. I have cried and cried, and I think Shakun is going to say, ‘Wow, what a performance.’ I come out and Shakun is just cracking up. He is just laughing in my face. I was like, ‘Uh, have I done some really awful job?’”

“But Shakun, I think, has a problem with people crying. He can’t keep a straight face which is very strange because he is a very sensitive director, so you would think otherwise. Once Deepika and I had a scene where we were emotional. We had to make Shakun sit in another room because he could not stop laughing,” she added.

Ananya earlier told ANI that shooting for Gehraiyaan has been an ‘absolute high point’ for her. “There’s a certain realness to the story of Gehraiyaan, while the film dives into the complexity of relationships it also talks about the thrill of being in love, of discovering oneself and charting one’s path,” she said.

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Gehraiyaan, produced by Hiroo Yash Johar, Karan Johar, Apoorva Mehta and Shakun Batra, is set for a direct-to-digital release on Amazon Prime Video on February 11.