Bollywood actress Kriti Sanon, who is all set to star as Mimi in Laxman Utekar’s film of the same name, says that it’s been a ‘satisfying’ experience for her as an actor. Explaining that the film has been a “lot of things” for her, Kriti says that she was passionate about Mimi and by the time she got on the set, she was obsessed with it.  

“My producer had kind of scared me in the beginning, saying you have to play a mother and it’s an emotion you haven’t experienced. I don’t know how you’re going to pull it off, he tried reverse psychology with me and that actually worked,” she said in an exclusive interview with Times Now Digital, adding, “The moment you tell me you can’t do it, I think I get a little more aggressive about it.”

“In the beginning, during the lighter beats, I had to get the dialect and get the fact that she has so many dreams. She’s this funky girl. It’s not in the trailer but she talks to Ranveer Singh’s posters, like she talks to posters around her and she is that kind of a girl. She believes she can go to Bombay and she can become an actress,” explains Kriti. 

Having that belief, coming from where she does and in the family where she is, was a major preparation part for Kriti, who shares that the shooting was divided into two parts for her – a happy schedule, and a sad schedule. 

For the second part, wherein Kriti turns a surrogate mother and the makers shed light on her pregnancy journey, the actress had to gain 15 kg. Opening up about the transition, Kriti says, “It was a very different journey. Never in my life I thought I would willingly put on 15 kg,” she said. 

The actress explained that she’s someone who has never been on a diet and eats everything from a butter chicken to a pizza. “So they all were stressed ki kaise karegi, even I was stressed about how will I do it. I had to really increase my appetite, I had to eat more than I normally do. Even when I am not hungry, have dessert after every main meal, have puri halwa, and all of that. Everything you are asked not to have was basically what I was having constantly,” she said, explaining the little things she did to put on extra weight to fulfil her role’s demand. “And finally, when we saw the 15 kg on screen, it really made a difference,” she added. 

Apart from her physical transformation, the second schedule was also “extremely draining” for Kriti because of the emotions her character was going through. “When they leave the child, what happens after that and there is a full shift in Mimi’s arc and her character. Everything was like the emotions that I don’t know of but I have to kind of derive from somewhere and think what the character would be feeling.”

The film, helmed by Laxman Utekar, also stars Pankaj Tripathi, Supriya Pathak, and Manoj Pahwa in key roles. The film, slated for a release on Netflix, is loosely based on the Marathi film Mala Aai Vhhaychy. The much-anticipated film is produced by Dinesh Vijan under his banner Maddock Films