Its’ not just
marriages, if Bollywood is to be believed then ‘heaven’ even has its’ own
casting agents, making casting calls for movies to be shot on Earth. How else
would one explain the chosen few, who never stand in a single audition line,
yet get ‘discovered’ purely by chance and launched in films, that go on to make
them stars?
Interesting films often
have equally filmy, behind the scene stories. Case in point the casting of,
Ariana Ayam who stars opposite Adhyayan Suman in Shekhar Suman’s directorial
venture 'Heartless'. While hundreds of girls were auditioned for this role that
requires a strong female protagonist, the one to bag it was a graphic designer
from New York, who did not even know that the film’s casting was underway.
Shekhar Suman says that
for the role they were looking for a fresh face who would still be able to hold
her own against stalwarts like Deepti Naval and Om Puri, in a role that
required as much performance as glamour.
A rather tall order for
any actress, leave alone a newcomer. Though they had a few girls shortlisted
who were competent enough, that feeling of having found ‘the’ girl was missing.
In fact at one time the film’s director was even told that this so called feeling of having gotten
the perfect match is a myth and he should just go ahead and start the film as
such perfect castings only happen in ‘films'.
Or in real life,
Shekhar insisted, holding on to this feeling that the perfect girl was out
there somewhere, he just hadn’t found her yet.
Shekhar’s faith in his
‘yet to be discovered’ heroine, paid off when he happened to see a short film
that Ariana had acted in purely as a lark. This short film was made by Adhyayan
and his friend for a college project and since the independent minded
youngsters were shooting the film on a low budget everything from the cast to
the crew were their friends. Ariana had done the film because her friends asked
her to and that’s where it ended for her.
Except of course that
was actually the beginning. The minute Shekhar saw the film he knew he had finally found his female lead.
Of course convincing
her was another thing. From doing a
short film for fun to making a whole new career choice was kind of a life
changing deal for this young designer.
But once she had read
the script and Adhyayan and Shekhar had explained her role to her she was
excited and challenged enough by it to take a deep breath and say ‘ok lets do
this’.
(a quote here from
Ariana about the impact the story and her character had on her).
Having given it her go
ahead, Ariana also made sure she gave it her all and not for a second has
Shekhar regretted his decision of casting on instinct rather than the tried and
tested route of multiple auditions.
She is a natural,
reveals a source from the unit, looking at her performance its’ hard to believe
that she was not born to act.
But then again, maybe
she was and she was just waiting to be discovered.
