In recent days(showbiz news is all about recency) two of the co-actors from this season’s surprise success Laapata Ladies have been trying to generate interest in themselves, especially the discernibly more pushy male actor , who is hellbent on proving that he is star material.
Pouty selfies, planted stories about phantom fan frenzy, and even a hint of romance with a co-star….
I am sorry to say no one is paying attention. The star of Laapata Ladies is director Kiran Rao and probably her writers. As for the actors Laapata Ladies would have worked with any four unexposed young actors. For the four chosen ones to now see themselves as potential stars is very tragic.
For example Sparsh Shrivastava: he was seen in numerous other films and tv shows before and after Laapata Ladies including the recent Ae Watan Mere Watan where he went unnoticed.
A word of advice: do not mistake the wood for the trees. The success of a film like Laapata Ladies is incumbent on directorial skill alone. Shah Rukh Khan may take credit for Pathaan and Jawaan, the actors of Laapata Ladies are mere puppets of the director.
The same goes for Heeramandi . All the actresses and actors of this Sanjay Leela Bhansali creation have gone berserk with their uninterrupted selfpromotional babble. For many of them, it wasn’t enough to let Netflix handle their publicity. After Heeramandi started streaming many of the actors employed their own private publicists to pump up his or her presence in the show.
While one actress claimed she gave 41 takes for a shot(a humanly impossible feat) another claimed she was comparable with Meena Kumari(luckily the lady isn’t alive to sue) . Another claimed all her co-actresses had a crush on her husband when he came visiting on the set of Heeramandi when in truth there was no one on the set when the gentleman visited—it was lunch break.
One of the male actors from Heeramandi has gone amok with his self-publicity, claiming to be the “national crush” and the replacement for Sushant Singh Rajput.
In truth there is no clamour to sign any of these actors , no big queue of producers breaking their doors to sign them for multi-crore deals. Directors like Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Kiran Rao , Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Dibakar Banerjee do not sign stars. They sign actors. The triumph of Heeramandi and,on the other end of the spectrum, Laapata Ladies is the triumph of characterization .
All the frantic mindgames being played by the overzealous actors can only lead to a deadend, nothing else.
