Kolkata had a date with the Bollywood stars Abhishek Bachchan, Deepika Padukone and director Ashutosh Gowariker as they visited the city to promote their upcoming period movie ‘Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey’.
The film is a period film based on the struggle of revolutionary Masterda Surjya Sen and 1930 Chittagong uprising against the British rule in India.
Abhishek Bachchan is playing the role of Surjya Sen in the movie.
“I do film on the theme and story that come to me, while doing this film my love towards history has increased, Malini Chatterjee’s book has all the details. I decided to concentrate completely on Malini Chatterjee’s book for Surjya Sen’s reference,” director Ashutosh
Gowariker said about the film.
“I hardly knew much about Masterda, sadly, as Ashutosh told about the film, its story, I felt then would like doing it. I thought if I am not aware about, many people are not aware about him, this film gave me an opputunity to showcase him,” Abhishek said, when asked about the film and his experience.
Deepika Padukone who will be seen portraying the character of ‘Kalpana Datta’ in the movie said: “I believe that saree is a sensual outfit that a women can wear, I feel that Kalpana’s character was gorgeous and glamorous, for me the process as an actor is same, it has been a huge responsibility for me to portray such a character,” when asked about her saree clad avatar ,completely opposite to the roles she has been showcasing so far in her career.
Ashutosh added that his target audience for the film is not only Indians but even Bangladesh and Pakistan.
“My target audience is Indians world wide, with this film I want to expand it to Pakistan and Bangladesh. As Chittagong is in Bangladesh, I hope people there will also love to watch the film,” he said.
He also mentioned that he had worked hard in selecting the proper star cast for the movie so that the characters look nearly the same to the original people.
“When I read the book the first man came to my mind was Abhishek, I am fortunate that
Abhishek is playing Surjya Sen and Deepika playing Kalpana. I tried to see the photographs of the revolutionaries while casting. I found that there is an uncanny resemblance between Kalpana’s picture and Deepika.”
“But now I want to see that the audience express that they can also find Surjya Sen in Abhishek,” he said.
Abhishek said that it was a pleasure for him to do Bengali movies and will love to do more if somebody approaches him with a script he will be happy.
The film is slated to release on Dec 3.