Adah Sharma Opens Up About Her Role In Bastar: The Naxal Story(Photo Credit – Instagram)
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Adah Sharma, who started out with the horror hit 1920 (2008), has since been known for the sheer variety in her work—Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada movies, Hindi web series, short films, and music videos. Her cream includes Hasee Toh Phasee, Commando 2, the series Holiday, and the short Tindey. And last year, she played the central character in the blockbuster The Kerala Story, which, in terms of ROI, was the biggest hit of 2023.
She now does a 180-degree flip from her earlier roles to essay a gritty CRPF officer in her second film with the …Kerala… duo, director Sudipto Sen and producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah, in Bastar: The Naxal Story.
When I compliment her on the flip from her recent breezy-n-brazen turn as Rosie, the bar girl, in Sunflower 2, Adah Sharma gushes, “Thanks for acknowledging that it is a 180-degree shift from Rosie! Yes, Neerja Mathur, my character, is someone every girl would want to be, and I would not mind having one-fourth of the strength she shows in unimaginable situations! Even after seeing that 76 jawans have been slaughtered, she does not break down but holds her emotions.”
Adah Sharma admits that her looks, nature, and behavior were modeled by a mix of CRPF soldiers, many of whom she met. She says, “Just their fearlessness was amazing! There was this 7-month pregnant girl who had not revealed her pregnancy just so that she could remain on duty, and it was disclosed only when she could not bend down to tie her shoelaces, which came loose! I had to put on 10 kilos, too, and these girls are very strong and fit. They carry 8 to 10 kilos of weight, including food, in their bag-packs, as they do not know when they will be able to eat next. In Bastar, the Naxalites poison even fruits on a tree and hide bombs under leaves! I am very patriotic, but as an actor, what I did was nothing compared to what these girls do in real life!”
Adah confesses, though, that she was made to carry a real gun that weighed eight kilos. “My back still pains and I can only wear chappals as of now!” she smiles. “I also had to develop a style of talking tough that was different from my normal, polite way. But all that is my job as an actor!” Added confidence, she says, came from the fact that she was in the “reliable hands” of the producer and director of The Kerala Story.
The actress has been trained in Silambam, an Indian form of martial arts, but apart from the focus and dedication that every such discipline teaches, it was of little direct use here. “In the Commando franchise, it was hand-to-hand choreographed combat!” she says. “Over here, the action was all so real!”
