Actress Eesha Rebba, who recently took us through waves with her performance in Dayaa, speaks to The Pioneer over an exclusive chat, sharing insights of working on the project, donning a pregnant woman character, and more.
SHIKHA DUGGAL
Every streaming platform these days has one genre that has been milked to death: the crime thriller. It has been presented in a million different ways! Only a few manage to stand out, of which one of them is Eesha Rebba’s Dayaa — she had a sucker punch of a start that set the tone till the end. Soon, the narrative slips into the territory of becoming a commercial web series with all the elements that any other Telugu movie would have. There is a certain eeriness that is developed through the cinematography, which gives our actress a solemnity right before the chaos is unleashed.
So in an exclusive interview with Nitham Oru Vaanam fame, she sparked the conversation by saying, “I shot for only six days, and that was in Mangalore—our set-up was a fisherman’s house. You will have to drive past some rugged roads, paddy fields. We have to behave like we were self-sufficient. As an urban dweller, it was fascinating to me. But I was really worried about playing the role. Although the one thing I noticed after watching the series was truly the fact how our director placed every prop, and it was spot-on.”
The actress had to appear to be a pregnant woman, so how did she carry it off? Well, she described this experience as, “I don’t call my baby bump, which was forged in the category of a prop, still. The mental strain I always feel before enacting any character, whether in a film or a series, always gives me a strange high. The shamed womb that I was carrying had to be tried more than three times to fit the part. I wasn’t able to walk like a pregnant
woman, even then. I started to form a picture of a baby in my womb, and the emotions aroused. My posture changed! Even after the womb was removed, I couldn’t stop walking like that funnily. I was so careful on the sets, as if I really am carrying a real baby in my womb (she giggled a bit).”
She continued, “I am not the main protagonist helming the story because you will see me here and there, that’s all. But I didn’t worry about my screen-time at all! I shot maximum scenes inside the hut. But when I shot at the port, my expressions and enactment turned out to be an intense move.”
The Most Eligible Bachelor fame then made a revelation: “There is a season two to Dayaa. My director only and only wants to create curiosity amongst all of us. One of the toughest scenes I shot was walking into the sea because the waves were going in the total opposite direction; it wasn’t expected. The afternoon sunlight by the sea increased the amount of salinity so much. And then during the delivery scene, I went blank even after discussing the sensibilities! How do we react to a baby being delivered? Obviously, I have seen my sisters deliver, but I started laughing on the sets. I was feeling embarrassed. How do I scream and show the pain on my face? I didn’t scream, I just yelled at the top of my voice in the air. I could only make it seem believable after the second take. I couldn’t even dub it!”
The one major indication she was given on the sets of Dayaa by the director was to not act like the actress Eesha: “Don’t give any expressions, please. I wasn’t sure how I was going to look on-screen. So when you see the series, most of the time I am in some sort of thinking mode because of my director’s instructions. I was always up to some planning and plotting! I can never imagine myself as inscrutable. But now I am inspired to take up more characters, even if they demand me to go like a deadpan. My fans didn’t expect me to go poker-faced, that’s why there’s a buzz on Twitter. I can read messages saying they were shocked to see me!”
