'Raaz 3D': Bipasha Basu speaks about playing the dark Shanaya

She’s been called ‘unconventional’, ‘bohemian’, ‘bold’. In fact a lot of such ‘unconventional’ epithets have adorned the vocabulary of people whenever it has come to describing this gorgeous lady. But Bipasha Basu isn’t just your petite, dove-eyed, dusky heroine who is there as a mere accessory in a film.

Despite being a woman who was catapulted to fame, thanks to her bold role of a seductress and her numerous kissing and love-making scenes on screen, the actress admits being petrified whenever she has the herculean task of kissing a co-actor. Kissing a co-star, says Basu, “is terrible, scary, the worst thing in the world.” And in ‘Raaz 3’, where the actress will be seen kissing the quintessential kisser of Bollywood, Emraan Hashmi, she felt the pressure of performing well. In a tete-a-tete with Ananya Bhattacharya of Zeenews.com, Bipasha Basu speaks about ‘Raaz 3’, her career so far, and all that goes into essaying a dark character. Your debut was with a negative role – way back in 2001, with ‘Ajnabee’. How does it feel portraying one again? I think it’s very challenging as an actor to dabble in a dark role because it’s very easy to be regular and simple and sweet – because that’s what we all are – we’re very regular human beings, besides being actors, in our normal space. And for a person like me, who lives a very very ordinary life, when I’m not working, it’s very exciting to be something which really challenges you and pushes you as a human being. What about ‘Raaz 3’? How was the experience of playing Shanaya? Excellent. I think every day was tough because it was exhausting to be that dark and I wanted to finish the film fast and get out of Shanaya. I was not very happy doing what I was during the process of making ‘Raaz 3’. It kind of was very demanding. I am generally a very happy person and to be very cut off from people, to stay not connected with people – it was not a very nice feeling. So I just wanted to finish the film and move on to something lighter or maybe go for a holiday! After ‘Raaz’ and ‘Jism’, you’ve come a long way. ‘Raaz’ was your first commercial success, and there you were the victim. ‘Raaz 3’ sees you as the predator. Was it a conscious choice? Yes, absolutely. I think you have to move forward. After ten years of being in the business, and doing all kinds of roles – thought-provoking, exciting, glamorous, de-glamorous – there comes a point of time when you realize that you are looking for something very unusual, never been seen in the Hindi film industry before: Shanaya is that. You’ve worked in ‘Shob Charitro Kalponik’. How was it working with Rituparno Ghosh? It’s probably the best film in my career, one of the most beautiful films that I’ve done. I loved the script of the film; I loved everything about it, it’s really beautiful. The story is a complex one, it explores the complexities of the man-woman relationship – a relationship between a husband and a wife. I’m very, very proud of the fact that my parents always wanted me to do a Bengali film, and I got to do such a beautiful one based on literature. What after this? After this, I’m acting in a film called ‘Aatma’, which is based on the supernatural again, but an extremely author-backed role – a fantastically, commercially potent film. So I’m looking for author-backed roles. It has to be commercially viable and entertaining, it shouldn’t be like an art-house creation. I want to do really human roles, and roles with meat – and one which comes across as a commercially entertaining package. Follow @nanya116