Tejal Sinha
More than just a beauty with good looks, Natasha Bharadwaj is an adept belle with some prodigious artistic skills. Well, something we are sure you’d all agree too.
Her departure from an intense world with Mumbai Diaries 26/11 to playing a savage girl-next-door girl in Ishq Next Door has made her win over hearts with her character of Meher. Coming to something that was a no-brainer for Natasha was the script. She says, “It was so beautifully written; I’m saying this in fact in every interview (she giggles) because it makes my heart smile. I play a very beautiful character; the entire show, the characters, the way the characters evolve, is so interesting, and that really excited me to do this, and I’m glad I did this.”
No surprise, there have been several shows and films that bring in some really interesting girl-next-door themes. With Ishq Next Door, Natasha felt refreshed to get to work as a different version of the girl next door.
“I think a part of me is a girl next door in real life,” enthuses the Ishq Next Door actress, adding, “I think this one similarity between my character and me is being savage, but I think that’s one parallel I can think of. Yes, I do. I am a girl next door for sure, but there is a side to me which is side-splitting.”
Natasha being a true Bombay girl, we were eager to know how she made sure to get into the skin of Meher, a West Delhi girl. So were there any workshops she was a part of? Let’s hear from her, as she takes us all through the process: “We had a couple of meetings according to the character. She is a girl from West Delhi, where you have this typical colony story, and I am a Bombay girl. We live in apartments, and the culture here in Bombay is very different. Getting all of it right, like how a West Delhi girl was something that I had to sit with my director and crash out, There was a lot of detailing of emotions in terms of small things like hair and makeup. Also, there is so closely looking at it and making it very real and very perfect to the character, which I thought was really good, so how she graduated from one ceiling to the other, so definitely, it was the director’s note.”
Be it a debut project or projects later on, every film is and forever remains special for any actor. Not only does a film make them work on something different, but it also takes them out of their comfort zones. Echoing this, Natasha expresses, “Every show that I do is like my baby. I put my heart and soul into anything that I do, and when I work on something that is something that I really want to do, I cannot say that this has my heart, but of course it has my heart and soul.”
Well, not only does Natasha play a leading lady in the show, but also on the sets, as she reveals, “I was enjoying it, and in fact I was the most pampered one on the set. I believe whatever I see is it. Is it good or bad? It comes from a state of calm and detachment
because it expresses something someone wants to say or express. I just try to find a balance and at the same time just be adventurous and feel extremely grateful for what I have, and it’s like people just believe in you, like giving me different characters. Meher is not an easy character and is very different from previous ones. You have to get the tonality of the character. I’m a Bombay girl and a very non-Delhi girl, so I’m very grateful for directors and producers to see me believe in me and my craft, which is something I feel pride in having to give me a job, and I do it because it’s going to be the best, and I put all my heart, soul, and sweat into it. That’s what I do and think.”
An actor always looks for opportunities for improvement and growth. Any actor would be greedy to work on multiple genres that brighten up their artistic skills and let them know that they can mould themselves. In fact, Natasha was someone who’d always wanted to be an actor. However, the reasons kept changing. Well, it was her mother who exposed her to the world of cinema. On a concluding note, she signs off by saying, “It’s just about doing good work, then characters of someone I’d really want to play, something like the character of Priyanka Chopra as Jhilmil in Barfi, Alia in Udta Punjab, or Deepika in Piku. I just want to explore the entire field of being an actor. I’m a very greedy actor. Doing great work is something that I look forward to, and it’s always been like a dream.”
