When Urmila Matondkar Spoke On Playing A Stalker In Pyar Tune Kya Kiya News24 –

Back in those days they called it persistent courtship. Now it is known as stalking, a felonious offence. In Ram Gopal Varma’s Pyar Tune Kya Kiya, directed by Rajat Mukherjee, which clocks 24 years on April 27, Urmila Matondkar played a woman obsessed with Fardeen Khan to the point of lunacy.

Earlier, she played a psychotic woman in Ram Gopal Varma’s Kaun. Speaking on her back-to-back tryst with traumatized characters, Urmila had said, “Kaun was a very different film without songs and it moved in a very unconventional time zone. It was all over in 1 hour 40 minutes. When people talk about the unconventional films being made in India, how come they don’t talk about Kaun? I’ve come to the conclusion that I like playing characters who are completely unlike me. I love going on a journey discovering other characters. If I can stir the audience with my exploration of my character in Pyar Tune Kya Kiya, I’ll think I’ve succeeded. In Kaun, my character took the audience into confidence, only to betray the trust. In Pyar Tune Kya Kiya, my character goes many steps ahead.”

She felt her character in Pyar Tune Kya Kiya was more complex than Kaun. “I feel this film and my character are way ahead of Kaun. The human element is very strong in this picture. It was immensely satisfying to do this film. Kaun was comparatively one-dimensional. Someone said something very revealing about my performance in PTKK. ‘One minute you’re busy hating Riya in the climax. But the next minute your heart reaches out to her.’ The day after the film’s release, I got a call from a strange but very attractive voice. It was none other than the nation’s heartthrob Hrithik Roshan. I have no words to describe that man’s sincerity. His wife Susanne is equally wonderful. She was so sweet to me about PTKK. There’s one thing about the flood of congratulatory calls. Everybody spoke about me getting an award for this film. Now I don’t care if I don’t actually get one. The fact that they think I’m good in the film is award enough.”

But Urmila, and no singing and dancing! “I wonder if my young fans feel disappointed. There’s no singing and dancing in Pyar Tune Kya Kiya. Even my makeup is subdued. There was a temptation to dabble in some warpaint. But I resisted. I wanted the character to remain raw. I didn’t want Riya to come across as a decked doll. I felt as though my darkest most unexplored emotions were being brought out in the open. I knew I was taking a big risk with this role. I didn’t even call anyone for the trial after the film was complete. Mere se jo ho saka maine kiya. Fardeen’s father Mr Feroz Khan liked my performance so much he had tears in his eyes. I saw Riya Jaiswal in PTKK as a tremendous opportunity. I knew I had to give the role my best shot. To my relief, surprise, and delight, every nuance in my performance is being noticed. The response is more than anything I could have ever imagined or expected.”

Urmila admitted people are stunned by her performance. “I’m too stunned to react to them. To be honest, it feels wonderful to have made such an impact. The biggest challenge for me was to have the audience on my side until the point Riya is introduced to the Fardeen character’s wife. It was so challenging. My character kept going through various highs without the support of escapism or melodrama. Since the character was so real, I couldn’t afford to indulge in any exaggerated emotions. I wanted to BE Riya Jaiswal, not act as her. That’s exactly how audiences have responded. Frankly, I was quite tired of people complimenting me on my looks, clothes, etc. That no longer excites me. Because regardless of how my films have fared, I’ve got complimented for those things. If you look back on my career, I’ve always looked for a different dimension in my roles. I’ve never taken the easy route to stardom. And I’ve paid a heavy price for it. Because I’ve been picking and choosing my roles, many people think I haven’t been getting that many roles. Then there’s been a whole load of absurd and disgusting gossip and speculation about me because I’ve chosen to do films repeatedly with one banner (Ram Gopal Varma Productions). And let me tell you, I’ve said no to loads and loads of money because of my over-selectiveness. Today, my colleagues are going into parallel cinema right after doing sixty mainstream films. But let me tell you, I never needed to do that. Right from Judaai, I’ve been doing realistic cinema within the mainstream. I don’t want to sound as though I’m against parallel cinema. In fact, I’m its strongest supporter. One day very soon I hope to be in a film of that nature. But from what I’ve done so far, Judaai wasn’t exactly a lovey-dovey mushy-mushy cutiepie love story. In Satya, my character turns her back on the man she loves. That isn’t what a Hindi film heroine was expected to do. Excuse me, where’s the element of realism in what we heroines are required to do in most of our films? Achchi hoti hai to achchi, buri hoti hai to buri. I’m no one to pass judgment on the quality of roles available to heroines.”

She admitted she was able to portray Riya so well only after some experience. “If I had done Pyar Tune Kya Kiya five or six years ago, I might have fallen flat on my face. Riya is unlike any other character I’ve seen in Hindi cinema. I wanted people to see her as the withdrawn, unfriendly, cold, and unresponsive girl. Who knows what was going in her mind, when her mother passed away, how much time her father spent with her, etc. I built a life for her beyond the screen. It’s been a tough and rewarding process to get into Riya’s head and heart. I didn’t want them to think, ‘Urmila Matondkar baal kaat kar aa gayee hai.’ From Judaai I’ve been working my way towards a realistic approach to my roles. PTKK is a kind of culmination. Someone very important even asked me whether I had visited a mental asylum before doing the scenes where my character goes insane. This time I didn’t have Manish Malhotra to design my character’s clothes. I did it on my own. Because I didn’t want Riya to look ultra-glamorous. There are many scenes where I want to take a hairbrush and comb Riya’s hair (laughs heartily). Riya looks like she’s got a terminal bad-hair day. But you know what? My role behind the ones that I play on screen are so special I would rather not talk about them. It’s like touching a dewdrop or opening up the petals of a flower. How much of your star vanity you are able to discard is again a measure of your growth as an actress. I feel Kamal Haasan has achieved that. You know, I did my first-ever film as a leading lady with him. I distinctly remember him telling me that an artiste’s biggest achievement is to get rid of inhibitions. When Shabana Azmi did that telephone scene in Arth, she seemed so emotionally naked. Unless you overcome your individual inhibitions you cannot really get into character. I just feel every role pushed and pulled you ahead. In real life, I am such a boringly sane and stable person, I can never lose control like Riya.”

I had also asked Urmila if she could be a stalker in real life. “I’m too much in control of my life to fall so recklessly in love. In fact, someone asked me the other day if I’m a control freak. I don’t like that term. I’m a control freak only as far as my own life is concerned. I’m always in possession of my emotions. It’s very scary for me to talk about my emotional life. Whenever I open my mouth about it, I find myself in some deep trouble (laughs). It’s better just to avoid the topic and save yourself the pain of being judged by strangers and acquaintances. I’d be lying if I said I don’t have those negative emotions of Riya Jaiswal. But they are so internalized they are negligible to my existence. That’s why playing Riya was a tremendous challenge. I played the role with so much intensity because perhaps I’d love to feel love and hate as passionately as Riya. I know a lot of people who constantly live life on the edge. I can’t do that. Probably because I fear the repercussions. To me, by far, the hardest sequence ever was the one in PTKK where I come to kill Jai’s wife. There I go from lethal vengeance to extreme tenderness to betrayal, rage, and hurt. The camera just kept rolling. Nobody called ‘cut.’ I went up to the video monitor to see what we had done. I had to snap everyone on the sets out of their stunned stupor. As for me, the minute I got out of camera range, I was normal. It’s really scary. But I have to keep that much distance between myself and my characters. An artiste has to be outside the character even when she empathizes totally with it. Pyar Tune Kya Kiya is a high because it comes once in a while. That’s why we call it a high. I’m not claiming that all my performances would be equally satisfying. But I have to find something interesting in each role that I do. I’m too much of an optimist to think that I’d never get a role like this often. Let’s see what life has in store for me. I’m not likely to get unduly worried about opportunities. I took a huge risk by having only one film, Pyar Tune Kya Kiya, on hand, and that too one which wasn’t the most commercially viable of projects.”

She also spoke about the lack of nuances in the way women are portrayed in our films. “I think a humane approach to characters is completely lacking in our films. None of us in real life is Ram or Sita. Some of us may be more Ravan than Ram. But at the end of the day, we are all human. Lives are made of interesting episodes. And we all live through good and bad. This is precisely why I refuse to comment on others’ lives. We never know what the situation is in our neighbors’ homes.”