Exclusive: Kesari Chapter 2 Director Karan Singh Tyagi Reveals How Ananya Panday Turned Into Dilreet Gill (Photo Credit – Instagram)
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When Kesari Chapter 2 was announced there was a lot of noise around Ananya Panday’s casting in the film as Dilreet Gill. Buts surprisingly, the actress surprised everyone, and shut down the troll, owning every single frame of the the film. In an exclusive conversation with Koimoi, director Karan Singh Tyagi was elated to hear this feedback and he agreed that Ananya is a dynamite on screen in the film.
Discussing why he chose Ananya Panday and stuck to his decision despite all the negativity and trolls surrounding the actress most of the time, Karan said, “The process was we were being true to the script. We were being true to the material that, you know, was in front of us. And for Dilreet Gill’s part, we needed a young female actor because, through the character, we were honoring India’s first female lawyer. So, I wanted somebody who was vulnerable and who also had this killing resolve in their eyes. So I wanted these two characteristics to kind of interplay with each other, vulnerability and strength.”
Gehraaiyan Helped To Pick Ananya
Talking further about the casting process of the film, Karan Singh Tyagi revealed, “I was lucky to see some rushes of Gehraaiyaan even before it was released, and Ananya was very good; I think it is one of the most sensitive portrayals.”
Applauding how Ananya Panday made sure that she puts her heart and soul into Dilreet Gill, Karan Singh Tyagi shared, “I went and narrated the script to her. She liked the script, and then we were sure that this script required a lot of preparation. She went through dialect classes for over a year. We had Amitij Singh Grewal, who was her dialect tutor, so she got the Punjabi diction right. She read a lot of literature on Jallianwala Bagh. In fact, there’s a book that contains the poetry of Punjab and poetry about the Jallianwala Bagh tragedy. She kept that book with her throughout the shoot. She read each and every poem in that book.”
Ananya Panday’s preparation for Kesari Chapter 2 did not end there. While this was part of her Punjabi, she still had to play the lawyer right. Explaining that preparation, Karan Singh Tyagi revealed, “To get the legal mannerisms right, I introduced her to a friend of mine who works at the Bombay High Court. She’s a female lawyer, and Ananya shadowed that female lawyer; she saw proceedings in the Bombay High Court. She understood how a lawyer talks in a court of law. So what you’re seeing on screen is a result of that hard work.”
Kesari Chapter 2 stars Ananya Panday as India’s first female lawyer, Dilreet Gill, a character that was built to shoulder the battle along with Akshay Kumar‘s C Sankaran Nair, the man who fought against the British Government, in one of the longest legal battles of India.
