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Shilpa refuses to be a sitting duck
She describes her latest assignment - being a celebrity judge on Sony?s celeb-dance show - a "new role of my career".
The stunning Shetty goes to great pains to tell us that her television appearance is just one of the things "that excited me" and it’s just one of the things she wants to do.
"The channel just wanted eight days in a month and the show would be over in two months so keeping aside 16 days wasn’t a big demand. Besides, the fact that celebrities, who are essentially nondancers have to compete with each other makes the show really watchable."
In case you think Shetty has run out of big screen roles, she emphasises that she’s just as busy with Anil Sharma's Apne "with the three Deols - Dharamji, Sunny and Bobby", Anurag Basu’s Metro "with Kay Kay Menon, Konkona Sen Sharma, Shiney Ahuja and Kangana Ranaut" and a "couple more films which I will talk about only after I’m through with Metro." As you read this, Shetty is packing her bags to leave for the 10-day outdoor schedule of Apne at Rajkot.
She says she’s at a stage when she need not do any and every role that comes her way, though she rues the fact that despite doing “technically more difficult roles in Rishtey and Phir Milenge, people still appreciate (me) more for my dancing. It’s not fair, but I don’t deny that I feel good when people comment about my dance moves.”
She says her being a good dancer "gives her a reason to judge somebody on an ability I’m well versed with.” A trained Bharat Natyam dancer, Shetty is diplomatic when it comes to naming her left-footed co-stars. "I'm certainly not naming them," she laughs, adding, "Though I have told Mahesh (Manjrekar), who is participating in Jhalak… that as a judge I’ll take revenge for all those retakes he made me go through for his films." She counts Prabhudeva as the best on the dance floor.
Talk veers to the controversies surrounding her, especially the PILs filed against her and charges of obscenity leveled at her, and she rolls her eyes.
"In this country the law is such that anybody can file a PIL. But I refuse to be a sitting duck. I have never wanted cheap publicity and I would not accept anybody getting it at my cost. I don’t want to talk more about it because I know that in my entire 13-year career I haven’t done anything undignified."
Speaking of working with sister Shamita again, she says, “We will work together if the roles are good enough. Shamita is a better actor than me because you won’t believe the amount of work she refuses. People come to our house with more offers for her than for me." Finally, when one asks where marriage figures on her list of priorities, she laughs aloud and says, “I have not made any such list.
