Almost 30 months after her last Hindi film K.L.P.D. (Kismet Love Paisa Dilli), Mallika Sherawat recently returned to the Bollywood scene with Dirty Politics. Inspired by a true story of power games, deceit, seduction and murder, the film is an author-backed opportunity for Mallika, who plays the central protagonist. With close to a dozen odd notable names from Bollywood coming together for this volatile political social drama by veteran filmmaker K.C. Bokadia, it is Mallika’s moment of pride to be holding center stage amidst all.
Mallika, the film has an interesting bunch of actors and many of them are National award winners or veterans in their own field. Did they make you feel intimidated?
I was so nervous when I had to shoot with Naseerji (Naseeruddin Shah). There were just two simple scenes and I couldn’t deliver at all as I was standing in front of such a huge actor. But he was very encouraging and gave me ample time and space to get my groove right. Then there are these other big daddies from NSD – Ashutosh Rana, Rajpal Yadav and Om Puri.
And what about sharing screen space with Om Puri? You had several intimate scenes with him in the film…
Aaah, Omji! Don’t even ask how I felt when I had to do bold scenes with him (laughs). My mom has grown up watching his films and here I was, getting intimate with him on screen and that too in such full details. He told me that he had some scenes like these in Aastha with Rekhaji. Well, he may have been comfortable but personally for me, it was so embarrassing.