Neena Gupta: Don’t like negative roles as one gets bracketed

Locking horns with Manoj Bajpayee in 'Dial 100', Neena Gupta says she had initially rejected the thriller presuming her character was all-black

Delightful as she is in family comedies, Neena Gupta has switched gears with Dial 100. The trailer of the ZEE5 crime thriller promises a battle of wits between the leads — Gupta’s grieving Seema Pallav calls the police control room manned by Manoj Bajpayee’s cop character, with the intent of settling scores with him. Gupta begins our conversation by saying that she had initially turned down the role.

“When the casting person called, I was told it’s a negative character who wants to take revenge. I told him point-blank that I didn’t want to do it. I don’t like doing negative roles because once you do it, you get bracketed. But my manager convinced me to hear the narration, explaining how the character’s arc develops. That’s when I realised it’s not an [all-black] role, but one that has many shades,” she recounts.

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Manoj Bajpayee in the film

To the actor, the Rensil D’Silva-directed venture is among the many projects that offer her nuanced roles, thus making her filmography richer and her current phase of career, more fulfilling. “When I was young, I didn’t get such roles. Usually, if a movie or series is a hit, you start getting similar parts. I wonder why Rensil and Siddharth P Malhotra [co-producer] thought of me for such a distinct role.”

Breathing life into the part of a mother in despair, however, didn’t come easy. The senior actor credits D’Silva for guiding her through the tricky slope. “How do you play such a role without the risk of going over-the-top? I had figured three ways of playing the character, but Rensil asked me to approach it in a totally different way. He gave me the rhythm of the character,” says Gupta, adding that the night shoots posed another challenge. “I get tired during night shoots. We finished the film in 18 days, with my portions [being shot] over nine nights.”

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