Aditi Rao Hydari reveals Bhansali told her ‘khana mat khana’ for this reason

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi is one of the most anticipated shows of the year.

Aditi Rao Hydari plays Bibbojaan in the magnum opus, and revealed in a new interview with Rediff how she landed the part in the series. The director even told her not to eat before a crucial scene.

What Aditi said
In the new interview, when Aditi was asked about how she collaborated with Sanjay Leela Bhansali, the actor recounted her experience and said: “He’s very passionate about everything he does. He’s also very knowledgeable. He has true love for each and every art form that goes into making cinema, and that I find very infectious. I would say that whatever one comes with in one’s blood, when you walk on to a Sanjay Leela Bhansali set, it is complete surrender. You have to become a sponge.”

He said, ‘Aaj khana mat khana’
She further continued, “People perceive actors in a particular way. They may be like, Oh, if you blow, she’ll just fly away. She’s so delicate! But for him, there’s more to a person than that. One day, he kept me hungry because I had to do a scene which was full of fire. He said, ‘Aaj khana mat khana’, and that helped me get that simmering sense of injustice.”

Heeramandi features Manisha Koirala, Sonakshi Sinha, Richa Chadha and Sanjeeda Shaikh in pivotal roles. It also marks the comeback of actor Fardeen Khan after a gap of 14 years. The series explores the cultural reality of Heeramandi, a dazzling district, through the stories of courtesans and their patrons set against the tumultuous backdrop of the Indian freedom struggle of the 1940s. It releases on Netflix on May 1.