Roopa Ganguly reveals it took her 1.5 hrs to transform into 'Draupadi' for BR Chopra's epic Mahabharat!

Roopa Ganguly, the Kolkata-born, currently a Rajya Sabha member, shared the joys and challenges of working on a TV series - Mahabharat.

New Delhi: Over three decades have gone past since the cult classic 'Mahabharat' played on television, but Roopa Ganguly still vividly remembers how every day, at the crack of dawn she would reach Mumbai's Film City to allow makeup artists the time to transform her into the role of 'Draupadi'.

The 55-year-old actor-turned-politician went down memory lane to recall the period of the late 80s when the epic TV series was filmed and admitted that due to the hectic schedule of the shooting, she "did not get to watch the series" on television.

"I got to finally see the series properly on television when 'Ramayan' and 'Mahabharat' were brought back on TV for a re-run during the (Covid-induced) lockdown, and I really enjoyed it. It also made me very nostalgic about the shooting days," she said.

The Kolkata-born, currently a Rajya Sabha member, shared the joys and challenges of working on a TV series, one of the most widely celebrated that still enjoys a cult status in popular consciousness, and which made her and several other cast members household names.

"Every morning, from my hotel at Juhu, Bombay, I would reach Film City, and by 5 am, I would be in the make up room. The shooting would start by 7 am, and my elaborate makeup and hairdressing would take at least an hour-and-a-half or even more, every day. And, it was long hair and we wore special costumes and lot of other things too, which took time, so I would reach there before other actors," she told PTI in an interview.