Kriti Sanon on playing a humanoid in ‘Teri Baaton Main Aisa Uljha Jiya’

Kriti Sanon speaks about her upcoming sci-fi romance drama, ‘Teri Baaton Main Aisa Uljha Jiya,’ co-starring Shahid Kapoor, the changing idea of romance, and her foray into production

We know actors are hungry for meaningful roles but Kriti Sanon has taken the hunt for substantial parts to a different level. After playing a surrogate mother in Mimi fetched her the National Award for Best Actress, Kriti will now be seen as a humanoid robot programmed to fall in love in Teri Baaton Main Aisa Uljha Jiya, the Hindi film industry’s Valentine’s gift this season.

Kriti describes herself as an ambitious Delhi girl who has found her footing in Mumbai, the city that fulfills the dreams of those who are determined, and talks candidly about why love stories are hard to find these days and how she stepped into creative production.

Edited excerpts:

There was no reference that I could look up to. We have seen robot characters that behave like robots. Even the desi ones like Chitti are more or less robotic. Here we are dealing with artificial intelligence. Sifra is so close to being a human being that humans don’t realise it. In the trailer, we have already shown that she is a robot. So we are taking the audience along; they know that I am a robot in the film. The challenge was to convince myself . Sifra is almost human, but still not human. The biggest demand on the character is that you know that Sifra is a robot but she still generates a feeling for herself in the audience. I hope we have succeeded in taking the audience into a world of imagination. That is what cinema is. The way we are progressing, a love story with a robot could very well happen in the future. Fifteen years back we didn’t have good Internet connectivity but today Sophia, the humanoid robot, has received permanent residency in Saudi Arabia.

There are certain things that humans do impulsively like hand gestures while talking. I had to eliminate them. Also, a robot processes things very fast. So I had to almost eliminate pauses from my thinking and expression. Coming from an engineering background, I look for logic in the given space of imagination. I was curious and questioned whether a certain gesture had become too human or too robotic. A lot was improvised on the sets, like a robot is not impulsive, doesn’t have emotional peaks, I had to keep her in between. Sometimes, it felt suffocating as well. It was like you had to act with your hands tied but overall it was fun.

Finding love stories is difficult these days because the emotion has become a bit frivolous and it is hard to find conflicts in romance these days. Earlier, the obstacles used to come from the family and villains. We are living in times when our heroes have become villains. Also, I feel, this generation has become so fast-moving that often we don’t realise whether the emotion we are feeling is love or not. Love is a very deep emotion. We crave it but we tend to touch it superficially and move on.

It could be a coincidence. For me, it is more of a creative thing. It was not about a lack of content or opportunities. While doing Mimi, I felt if I like a script, I like to be involved with it at a deeper level. I felt if a writer is keen on taking a journey with me, why should I wait for other people to believe in the idea? I like learning and shifting gears in life. When I started, I didn’t know how to act. I have learnt everything on the job.