Alaya F on polarising response to Bade Miyan Chote Miyan: The film still made money, just not as much as it should have

Alaya F is on cloud nine with the response to her latest film with Rajkummar Rao, Srikanth, which has inched it’s way to the hit tag. “The response is just really, really special. I don’t think I experienced this sort of a response to anything and it feels really special to be a part of a story that so many people were so excited to watch,” she gushes.

But right before this was a film which was a first for her in many ways: first big-budget, masala potboiler, and also the first one to get polarising reviews. Bade Miyan Chote Miyan had underperformed at the box office this year. She herself got extreme reactions from the audience. Alaya, who has starred in films such as Freddy and Jawani Janeman before this, chooses to look at the bright side, “I got a lot out of the film. My character is one of those that are pretty polarising. It was one of those things where you either think she’s incredibly endearing or you think she’s incredibly annoying. There’s no in between. So that’s been a unique experience for me because normally my characters are not so polarising. It that was quite different for me as an experience to sort of see that sort of response. People really enjoyed seeing me in a commercial space, which is really great for an actor because I want to continue to do all types of cinema.”

And what about the collections, did that get to her? Alaya quips, “I still managed to reach quite a large audience. The film still made money, just not as much as it should have, considering its budget and all of that involved. But a lot of people still saw it, compared to a lot of the other films I’ve done. They have not been on as humongous a scale.”