Why Shabana Azmi used to laugh at Zarina Wahab?

Mumbai, Feb 4 (IANS) Actress Zarina Wahab, who is awaiting the release of her upcoming streaming title, ‘Armaan’, has shared that actress Shabana Azmi used to make fun of her Hindi in a light hearted way.

The actress recently spoke with IANS during the promotional run of her OTT title, and shared the anecdote.

She told IANS, “I was from Andhra, I studied in Telugu, I was still studying, so I left school and went there. My Hindi was very bad. The Hindi accent and the Hyderabadi accent are very different”.

She further mentioned, “People used to laugh, Shabana, Kamaljeet Singh, Shelender Singh, all these people were from our batch, they used to make fun of my Hindi in good fun. But, with practice, my Hindi got better because there used to be a lot of our diction classes”.

She also spoke about her project as she said, “‘Armaan’ has been produced by Monali and directed by Manchan Vakil. We shot the entire movie in Kashmir and it was a lot of fun working there. It is a drama, a romantic drama with a different twist”.

Earlier, the actress recalled an incident when she walked into troubled waters during the making of her Malayalam debut film, ‘Madanolsavam’.

A recently resurfaced video of the actress shows her talking about the challenges of working around the Malayalam language, a language that she is still alien to even after having worked in 29 films in Malayalam cinema.

The actress said, “I don’t know Malayalam even now, although I have worked in 29 movies. My first film was with Kamal Haasan. So we went to the room. They were giving me money. I wanted the money as soon as possible because I wanted to buy a good flat. So they gave me all the money. I was very happy because I was able to give some money for the house. But, when I went there, there were dialogues I was like, ‘what are these dialogues?’. I didn’t understand a single word, I started crying, I was stuck. I got stuck with the money. I thought, ‘I will somehow return the money’. But I wanted to go back”.

“I refused to come out of the room So Kamal came to me, he said, ‘What happened?’. I said, ‘Kamal, I am so sorry I can’t work, I want to go back’. Then he said, ‘Now that you have come, work for a day. We will all help. You can write down your lines on the cutter. We will prompt you. Just give the correct lip movement and expression. We will dub’. While crying, I gave the first shot. They helped me, prompted me. I said, ‘Not bad’. Then there was a romantic scene, I held Kamal, and I wrote lines on Kamal’s hand I was looking at his hand I said, ‘Now I can do a Russian film also if anybody dubs’”, she added.

–IANS

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