Dar Gai: Need to ask actors what they are comfortable with

A still from the film

From the beginning, director Shakun Batra knew that Gehraiyaan, which deals with infidelity and interpersonal dynamics, would have more than its fair share of intimate scenes. So, roping in India-based Ukrainian filmmaker Dar Gai as an intimacy director felt like the right move. Even in the post #MeToo world, it's rare for Hindi films to have intimacy directors on board, but Batra's top priority while filming the relationship drama was to make his actors feel safe and comfortable.

Gai joined actors Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday and Dhairya Karwa well before the camera rolled on the Amazon Prime Video offering. What followed were weeks of workshops and trust-building exercises. "Intimacy directors facilitate any interaction, between actors, involving touch and/or emotional sexual tension. You need to work on different factors such as [their] psychology. As an intimacy director, you need to understand what it is to be an actor, [and accordingly decide the] exercises that you can use to take them in that zone," she explains.

Dar Gai and Shakun Batra

Her role required her to work closely with the actors, placing their emotional well-being over all else. "An intimacy director's main task is to make sure that only those people, who need to be on set, are present. If it means having three people on set, so be it. You need to ask the actors what they are comfortable with; you need to make the set feel safe [to them] and have minimum people. It's also the intimacy director's task to bring the actors out of that zone [after] a complicated scene. You have to help them unload [their emotions]. There are different exercises [to enable that]." An open dialogue with the artistes is key, she emphasises. "You have constant conversations [to understand] what they are comfortable doing, and what they are unsure about so that we can find ways to replace the [latter]. It all comes down to a healthy and unhealthy feeling on the set."

Gai, who previously directed some music videos, is glad that the team was willing to place their trust in her. "Deepika is so willing to experiment and push herself as an actor. We went through physically and emotionally demanding workshops." She highlights a crucial point, as she states that actors should demand an intimacy coach if they feel uncomfortable on the set. "If there are intimate scenes and no specialists there, they need to demand one. They need to be able to share their concerns."