Charu Shankar, who portrayed Ranbir Kapoor's mother in Sandeep Reddy Vanga's 'Animal', was recently seen as Ananya Pandey's mother in 'Chand Mera Dil'. In an exclusive interview with ETimes, she discussed her character and experience working on the film.
Playing Nivedita Prasad in 'Chand Mera Dil'
Charu shared, 'I play Nivedita Prasad, a single mother, a Bharatanatyam dancer, and a woman whose own journey of struggle, resilience, and artistry becomes the emotional foundation for her daughter Chandni’s character in the film, played by Ananya Pandey. Working with Ananya was absolutely lovely. She’s incredibly bright, grounded, deeply committed and very capable of handling all that she has on her plate, at such a young age.'
She added a funny anecdote: 'One very funny thing we discovered was that neither of us actually knew how to cook everyday Indian food. There’s a scene in the film where our characters are casually cooking bhindi while having a serious conversation. The problem was, neither of us had ever cooked bhindi before in our lives! By the end of the shoot, we had accidentally created what can only be described as ‘bhindi soup.’ We challenged the crew to taste it afterwards and absolutely nobody stepped up!'
Learning Bharatanatyam for the Role
Charu learned Bharatanatyam for her role. She explained, 'For me, Bharatanatyam became the emotional key to understanding Nivedita because the dance form itself teaches endurance with grace. You’re physically under strain in aramandi (the half squat), your muscles are burning, and yet your face, your hands, your entire upper body must continue expressing elegance, control and emotional clarity. In my backstory for Nivedita, I imagined that this shaped the way she moves through adversity. I learned mudras, abhinaya, nattuvangam, jatis in Adi Taalam, and even know how to teach a Bharatanatyam class.'
Memories from 'Animal'
Charu's role as Jyoti in 'Animal' earned her much appreciation. Reflecting on the sets, she said, 'It really was an excellent bunch of people. Sandeep, with his razor-sharp focus on the story and his larger-than-life filmmaking style, was still incredibly open to discussing the finer nuances of my character arc. Anil Kapoor is an absolute gem. Almost all my scenes were with him, and we spent a lot of time building detailed backstories for our characters so we could fully understand how these two people arrived at the moments we see in the film. And Rashmika is great fun, we also had a lot of scenes together. We were both due to fly out for our respective vacations straight from set one day, and of course that was the day the shoot was delayed, so when our shot finally arrived, we quickly switched into such super focus that we were done in a single take! I’m looking forward to reuniting with all of them for the sequel. Watching them at work made me realize that great actors are like race cars- precision built, quietly waiting, and able to go from zero to a hundred in seconds, the moment someone calls action.'
Working with Ranbir Kapoor
Charu added, 'Animal was my first time being on set with superstars, and I found all of them, Ranbir especially, incredibly warm, and generous as co-actors. There is much waiting that happens between shots, and so the cast spent a lot of time together, and discovered quite quickly that we all got along very well. We discussed favourite foods and holiday destinations, workout routines and of course our character arcs. Ranbir’s daughter was born while we were shooting 'Animal' and we saw adorable baby photos of her. Ranbir was always on top of the latest shows, and he complimented my performance in 'Delhi Crime 2', which had just released at that time.'
Other Projects
Apart from 'Animal' and 'Chand Mera Dil', Charu has been seen in projects like 'Delhi Crime season 2', 'Rocket Boys 2', 'Crew', and 'Binny and Family', among others.
