Wamiqa Gabbi of Modern Love Mumbai, Mai calls performing journey ‘magical’: ‘My characters helped me type private life’

Wamiqa Gabbi, who was just lately seen within the Netflix sequence Mai as Supriya Chaudhary, will now seem within the Amazon Prime Video sequence Modern Love Mumbai. The anthology sequence that consists of six episodes is the primary of the three localised Indian variations of the widely-acclaimed worldwide sequence Modern Love, and can begin streaming on the OTT platform on May 13, 2022. The episodes have been directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, Hansal Mehta, Shonali Bose, Dhruv Sehgal, Alankrita Shrivastava, and Nupur Asthana. Also Read| Modern Love Mumbai trailer: Amazon Prime Video brings warm stories of love by Vishal Bharadwaj, Dhruv Sehgal and more

Wamiqa stars as Megha, a Gujarati vegetarian who’s relationship an Indo-Chinese boy, in Vishal Bhardwaj‘s directorial Mumbai Dragon. Actor Meiyang Chang performs her boyfriend, whereas Malaysian actor Yeo Yann Yann performs his mom, Sui. The sequence additionally stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui as a Punjabi man who’s Sui’s good friend and neighbour.

Wamiqa revealed that Vishal Bhardwaj approached her to play Megha whereas they had been filming for Khufiya, a spy-thriller that additionally stars Tabu and Ali Fazal. The actor, who has portrayed versatile characters whereas working in Hindi, Punjabi, Malayalam, and Telugu movie industries, mentioned she was nonetheless shocked when Vishal approached her to play a Gujarati character in Modern Love.

She mentioned in a dialog with HT, “Generally when you are working with a director, he sees you in this one mould. For him to actually look at me as a completely different character and still be convinced that I could do that, that was just very rewarding for me. It was a Gujarati character so it was even more surprising because he knew that I am a Punjabi.”

Her character Megha is known as a “vegetarian dayan (witch)” within the sequence, however Wamiqa does not agree with this notion. She mentioned, “Megha, yeah, she is a vegetarian dayan. It’s weird that for the past 1.5 to 2 years, I have also become vegetarian, so for me Megha was not a dayan. Megha is a very free person. I related to her since she has the kind of life I have been living because of the attitude that my parents carry. Megha’s parents are very open-minded, which is why she follows her dreams, and is able enough to give advice to her own boyfriend about life and career. But Chang’s character belongs to a very different conservative family and has a very narrow-minded mother and Megha becomes a catalyst in bringing them closer.”

Megha additionally recounted her expertise of working with Yeo Yann Yann, Meiyang Chang, and Naseeruddin Shah on the present. She revealed that Yeo, a Malaysian actor, spent eight months studying Hindi so she may play the Indo-Chinese character Sui in Modern Love Mumbai.

Wamiqa mentioned, “I am so glad that I got to work with Yeo Yann Yann. She is such an amazing actor, the nuances she brought in her performance, in her character. I was just so happy that I could be in the same zone as her and Vishal Sir and see that magic happen and be part of that magical journey. Chang is obviously amazing. Yann learned Hindi for eight months. If you see the episodes you will see that you won’t even be able to tell that she didn’t know Hindi. She is so amazing.”

Wamiqa, who has labored in a lot of Punjabi movies, mentioned about Naseeruddin, “I remember the first time I saw him as a Sardar walking on our set and I was like ‘oh my god.’ He literally looked like the uncle who lives next door to my house. His body language, his get-up, it’s so real. Otherwise, people just don’t get those Punjabi uncles right, but his beard and everything is just so perfect and I was so surprised to see him like that. And I am so glad because I don’t think he has ever played a Sardar character and I was just so happy that he looks like that.

Wamiqa, who was seen in small roles in Jab We Met, Love Aaj Kal, Mausam, and Bittoo Boss before she appeared as a lead in the teen drama Sixteen in 2013, says she feels lucky about the kind of work she has been getting these days. Apart from Khufiya, she will be seen in Vikramaditya Motwane’s period drama Jubilee. She said that the roles she has been playing in her career have helped her in her personal life as well.

She said, “Right now I’m residing a dream the place I’m working with my favorite administrators and favorite folks. I simply don’t know what is occurring, one thing is happening. I swear I didn’t do something to make this occur. I used to be simply engaged on myself. And what was taking place was that, the type of position that I performed in Jubilee, or in Khufiya or in Mai, whereas I used to be capturing for these, it was serving to me in my private life. It was a bizarre coincidence that issues I used to be going by in my private life type of helped me get these scenes proper in my reveals. So once I say magical it’s due to these items that it turned extra magical as a result of there have been so many lovely coincidences taking place.”

She further explained, “While I used to be capturing for Jubilee, the character I used to be enjoying is such a strong-headed character. I don’t suppose I’m that strong-headed. When you might be enjoying a personality, you need to suppose just like the character, you should perceive why she is like this, why is she so emotionally sturdy and highly effective, so justifying all of that for my character, type of helped me acquire that energy personally as effectively. I bear in mind there have been occasions once I may have been actually weak, my character actually helped me be sturdy.”

We asked Tanisha if it was a conscious decision to choose the kind of work she has done, starting from Sixteen, where she played a teen girl Tanisha who falls in love with an older man, while her best friend who has a crush on her is sent to prison for killing his father. She replied, “Beggars can’t be choosers. I don’t come from a filmy background. It was by no means my option to do sure movies. Obviously, I’m very pleased with Sixteen, I’m so glad I bought to be part of it, however once more it was luck and no matter I used to be doing with my craft, that most likely bought me this venture.”

At the end of the day, Wamiqa credits her success to her father, who is a writer himself. She said, “It’s all due to my father. His first e book was of poems, however typically he’s a narrative author. And he is without doubt one of the board members of the Sahitya Academy’s Punjab wing. It’s due to him that I’m an artist as a result of he’s an artist, and we used to go and watch performs with him in Tagore Theatre and Kala Bhavan. My grandfather was in Army, however he was an excellent singer as effectively and would sing rather a lot. I feel all these issues type of bought into us additionally and I used to be drawn in the direction of artwork due to my father. So no matter I’m as we speak, and the type of life I stay, and no matter I need to do in my life, I had been ready to try this solely due to my father. Because he made positive that I be at liberty in my life. I feel we’d like extra males like my father.”