Thrilled to be in a Neeraj Pandey film, Ridhima Pandit on how she landed the role in Sikandar Ka Muqaddar
Avinash Tiwary and Ridhima Pandit in Sikandar Ka Muqaddar
Making her Bollywood debut with Sikandar Ka Muqaddar, Ridhima Pandit of Bahu Hamari Rajnikant fame acknowledges it was no mean feat. After a long wait for the right opportunity, she says, “I’ve realised that it’s not really in our hands to get the best of the projects. Playing important parts and being noticed is what I’m vying for at the moment. So I was very nervous [about Sikandar Ka Muqaddar].”
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Pandit, who also shot for a Marathi film and is awaiting release, plays a nurse in the Neeraj Pandey-directed Netflix film that premièred on November 29. Without revealing too much about her role, she describes how she landed it. “It was a phase when I was absolutely clueless and didn’t know what to do. I kept wondering why I wasn’t getting decent work. A casting director, who was surprised to learn that I am Maharashtrian, asked me to contact another casting agent looking for an actor for Neeraj Pandey’s film. They initially didn’t approach me because I’ve mostly played glamorous roles. I told them that I was ready to be even a fly on the wall, but I want to be in the project. Within two hours of sending my audition video, I was selected,” she says. For Pandit, working with Pandey was a dream come true. “Neeraj sir is an institution in himself. They had already auditioned over 50 people for the role and were exasperated. I guess it was destined for me. Neeraj sir is very selective about his actors and has often repeated them in his projects. I think it’s a compliment to be selected by him,” she remarks.
Meeting the director for the first time was “nerve-wracking” for the actor. “He is one of my favourite filmmakers. To sit in front of him, read lines and wait for his feedback was exhilarating. But he was kind enough to not give me any feedback. He liked me enough to not tweak my performance much. We shot the film in about 35 days,” she recalls.
Reflecting on her transition from television to OTT, Pandit observes, “There is a lot of time for prep, and everything is done with a lot more precision. But it depends on medium to medium, as how much luxury are you presented with when it comes to delivering, be it an episode or a film.” On biases against television actors, she states, “It is wrong to use the term ‘TV wali acting’, because an actor I do ‘script wali acting’. Most actors perform as per the script. There is a lot of prejudice attached to being an actor on television.”
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