New Delhi: Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi and Ananya Panday starrer ‘Gehraiyaan’ is all set to release on Amazon Prime Video on February 11. The modern love story is directed by Shakun Batra and also had an intimacy director onboard - making it the first Hindi film to have one. Intimacy director Dar Gai, helped Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Malhotra to become comfortable with each other and get into the skin of their characters to perform intimate scenes on screen.
In an interview with Hindustan Times, revealing what was the mood like on the sets, Dar shared, “One of our jokes was, every time I would come on the set, Shakun would go 'Oh my God, thank God you came. Just tell them to kiss. Because I do not want to tell them to kiss.' And, I would run away. That was our inner joke. And, then when there were intimate scenes, let us say a kiss or a hug, they would shout 'Where is Dar?' Because we would first do certain exercises to make it all much more easy and more fun.”
Talking about the attitudes of actors towards her, Dar told, “When I first entered my workshop, there was already a lot of trust between me and the actors. They were ready to experiment and try something they haven't. For example, the workshops that I did with Deepika and Siddhant were different from what we did with all of them together - Ananya, Dhairya. But, not even once, I felt any hesitation from their side. No one was like I do not want to do this. All of them were absolutely equal to each other, in terms of their eagerness to do something new. I guess that was very inspiring for me”.
On being asked why an intimacy director is important as actor’s already know what they are signing up for when they are offered a movie, she explained it with an analogy of why action directors are required. “When actors read the scene, they know what they are signing up for, but we still call action directors. Whether the actors perform or they call stunt artists, we have specialists on set to make sure our actors are physically safe. Likewise, intimacy direction helps us make actors feel safe - physically and emotionally,” she told.
