Exclusive: ‘Jubilee’ Actress Aditi Rao Hydari Says There's No Hierarchy On Vikramaditya Motwane’s Set, Calls Him ‘Actor’s Director’

In an exclusive chat with ABPLive, Aditi Rao Hydari talked about her character's reference in ‘Jubilee', how director Vikramaditya Motwane works and more. 

Aditi Rao Hydari as Sumitra Kumari in Jubilee

New Delhi: The OTT series ‘Jubilee’, directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, has won a lot of praise thanks to its concise depiction of the Indian cinema business in the 1940s and 1950s. Prosenjit Chatterjee, Aditi Rao Hydari, Siddhant Gupta, Aparakshati Khurrana, Wamiqa Gabbi, Ram Kapoor and others star in the series, which follows the entangled, difficult lives of budding performers in the wake of freedom. 

One of the characters Sumitra Kumari played by Aditi Rao Hydari really struck the viewers. Aditi did a great job of highlighting Sumitra's fragility with perfection. In an exclusive chat with ABPLive, Aditi Rao Hydari talked about her character's reference in ‘Jubilee,’ how director Vikramaditya Motwane works and more.  

Excerpts from the conversation with Aditi Rao Hydari

There's a difference between web series and a movie in terms of shooting, direction and how much freedom an actor gets. Is it true?

I guess because the pressures are different. So, there will naturally be a little difference in the pace or the content and just the kind of world that one can create. So, yeah 100%. Also, in a movie you have to tell a story in like 2 hours and you have to make sure that people come into the theatres. But OTT has its own challenge. You have to make sure that people press next episode and you have to grab their attention like that. So both are challenging in their own ways, but for sure the kind of stories that you can tell on OTT are different. 

As we have seen from just being bingers on OTT. The thing is audiences are so smart. Like the kind of content that they are consuming. I mean there's incredible talent in our country and when people are asking for that content; this kind of content is being made and it's being backed by platforms like Amazon and all and I think that's wonderful. 

So yeah there’s a lot of freedom to be creative and to tell stories you believe in. Not the stories led by the market and yeah the stories that you believe in.

Do you feel audiences are more critical nowadays, especially with the expansion of OTT. Do you think audiences are very picky?

They are and as they should be. I think it is an audience's right to demand quality, to demand talent, to demand stories that engage them. We are a very creative and talented country and there is so much hidden talent and it's being found and it's being given to audiences and I think it's their right to have it, honestly. 

How do you prepare to look like someone from the fifties? Tell me about the transformation.

I mean I always feel like ultimately you are playing a person, so you have to get to the heart of the person. That is the most important thing. The rest of it… in terms of the physical transformation that is done by a team. So you have a fantastic costume person, you have the correct jewellery, the correct costume, and you have incredible sets. You have a DOP who is taking care of lighting in a particular way. You have VFX. Yeah, so the world is created by the team but then I feel the transformation or the emotional transformation of the character, that is just something that I can't explain. 

I know when I have watched it myself and from the feedback that I've also got… I know that Sumitra is nothing like me. Possibly it was instinctive. I don't know. But I know the way my neck is, the way I'm standing, the way I'm walking, the way I even use my eyes… it's different. But I don't know how it happens. Maybe it happens from just listening to the director. Maybe it happens from just the script in itself. I'm not somebody who can speak about method because I don't have one. I go by the instinct!

The fifties vibe in ‘Jubilee’ look so real. There must be some practice to create that, how did you create the vibe?

How can you practice her feelings? I don't know. Because the thing is like I said the 50s vibe is created by a team. But the emotional journey of a character comes from the heart. So how I don't know how that is done. But having said that I was given two physical references, but that was more about the look of the character. There was Audrey Hepburn and Maharani Gayatri Devi. So that was the physical reference I got. I think because Sumitra is so unlike me. 

Vikram sir also made me watch Rachel Weisz, his favourite. Because Sumitra and her public persona have a kind of Pride and there's a wall. He didn't want me to emulate Rachel Weisz but he wanted me to see what that wall is because I don't have that wall personally at all. I'm very transparent as a person so he needed me to see that… what could it be. And I found that in fact very exciting for me because Sumitra has that quality of fragility, which is her inner being. But she has that wall in front of her where she doesn't let anybody in. So I found that in her very interesting. 

Now when I see feedback or read the feedback also, I actually feel really happy because somewhere nobody judges her. Like you can judge every character, but you can't judge her.  Like you feel everything she's done is correct. Because she's done it because she really felt like. She stood by loyalty, she's stood by her love, she stood by Justice, so you can't judge her.  And I feel that is why you root for Sumitra.

I didn't know that would happen when I was doing it. I just did it. That's why I say it was just instinctive. Just the writing was there but this inner thing is an instinctive thing, right? So yeah.

Do you think your character is slightly on the negative side?

It's only negative maybe from the writing. A lot of the things if you just read it… a lot of the things that she does are questionable. But when you see it, nobody has thought that including me. Even when I saw it and from whatever everybody has spoken to me about Sumitra, you root for her. You don't think she did anything wrong.

How is Vikramaditya Motwane as a director?

I enjoyed being on set with Vikram sir because he's one of those directors who give you a lot of freedom, but at the same time, he's an actor's director. He deals with every actor differently and with me, he would come and just give me one word sometimes and then just leave me. The actor and director just have to understand each other and how each other works. Because I think a lot of filmmaking is like being very good with HR.

There’s so much about the understanding of where the person is coming from, how they respond, what they respond to. So with Vikram Sir, I found it very easy. It was very effortless and very easy for me to understand him.

Also, his way of working I found really incredible because there is no hierarchy on his set. Each and every person feels ownership for what they're making. The team from actors to the last and the newest AD on set feels equal to everybody and I think that's a very amazing way to work.

We shot this in 91 or 92 days and the fact that I went that entire team was so together like collaborative teamwork. I think that is Vikram Sir’s biggest part. I think I find that really incredible about him.

In a multi-starrer project, do you think it becomes tough to stand out as an individual actor?

You know trust me every single film, even if I'm doing a love story and it's just me and a hero and it's just us, but the film is ultimately about the other people. In ‘Jubilee’, there is a plot itself. There is Sumitra, Binod, Jamshed and Srikant Roy and the plot is about revenge and love lost. So, you can't say that the other plots are not important. They are equally important and every story is actually like that even in a love story. Yes, the hero and heroine are important, that's what the film is about, but every single person is important and I think I look at it like that. 

And as an actor, I believe that everybody has to shine for a film to work.

How do you maintain to look effortlessly elegant all the time? 

There is no effort in being effortless. Trust me. The effort is for other people, not me. The effort is on my stylist, the costume designer. I wake up and I just go.