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Fashion completes 15 years: Samir Soni, Mugdha Godse share memories from the film's set
While for Mugdha Godse, it was special as Fashion was her debut film, Samir Soni got an opportunity to experiment with his character of a gay designer.
Mugdha Godse
Actor Mugdha Godse met Madhur Bhandarkar during the time he was making Traffic Signal and expressed her desire to work with him. However, things didn’t work out at that time. And when Fashion happened, Bhandarkar found the perfect girl for the role of Janet. Recalling how she came on board, Godse shares with us, “He with his team used to visit fashion shows to understand their workings and spend lot of time backstage . In one of our fashion weeks in Delhi, the team sat down and chatted a lot and I had maximum inputs and insights. The next day I was called to play a part in the film and I accepted it.”
While it was “a bit scary” for Godse, who herself was a top model, because the “film’s story was very close to reality”, she shares how shooting with the team made it a fun experience. “I remember shooting on my birthday and all of them celebrated it together. Priyanka got the cake and balloons. The experience was all the more special because it was my first film and being appreciated right after my first scene by Madhur and others felt special welcomed to the acting world,” shares Godse, whose debut was this film.
Samir Soni
Samir Soni played the character of Rahul Arora, a gay designer in the film, who also has a boyfriend. Soni recalls shooting a scene where he had to kiss the guy as he drops him off the car and how it turned out to be one of the funniest memories from the film’s shoot. “My whole idea of doing the film was that I wanted to play Rahul’s character in a way that you forget his gay-ness. Because earlier, gay characters were shows in a very stereotypical way. So I was mentally gearing up to kiss him and I wanted to do it right, so that the audience do not feel awkward or uncomfortable. So I sat in the car with the actor, who was very young at that time. And I saw him shaking. I asked him kya hua hai, and his response was ‘Bhaiyya darr lag raha hai’,” (he laughs). I was there trying to be in my character and this guy was calling me bhaiyya.”
Soni goes on to share how changes were made eventually. “Madhur later tweaked the scene and I just had to give him a peck on the cheek. And the boy was still scared. So before the shot, I sat and explained him like a big brother that ‘listen, don’t be scared. I will do it,” he tells us.
Ashwin Mushran
When Fashion was offered to Ashwin Mushran, he saw it as an excellent opportunity to work with Madhur Bhandarkar, Priyanka Chopra and others. “Not many actors at that time would say yes to playing a gay character at that point. It’s possible that the makers had a difficult time finding actors for these roles. But I saw that it was a great part and I wanted to work with Priyanka and Bhandarkar. But when I got the first call, I thought it was a nice role,” shares the actor, who was first offered the character played by Harsh Chhaya.
The film had several supermodels who were part of the film. Mushran shares how working with them was a great learning for him. “It was amazing having them on set. They didn’t really care about who was who. It was quite refreshing. They were like ‘we do what we do and we don’t really obsess over who is the actor and who is the director’, and I really liked it because we as actors want that to stay grounded. Sometimes everyone gives actors so much power that we think we are way more important than we are,” says the actor who played Rohit in the film.
Mushran also shared how he wasn’t keen on playing the character in a very different way. “I wanted to keep it natural. And I remember shooting a scene with Priyanka, when an AD came to me and said ‘Can you be a little more gay.’ I looked at him and said, ‘Do you look at the clothes I am wearing.’ And it was never addressed after that,” he ends
