This 2012 film was released at a time when Vidya Balan was slowly being recognised as the powerhouse performer that she is. Back in 2012 when the concept of ‘female-centric’ roles were still a new concept, here was a leading lady who was giving back to back memorable performances in Paa, The Dirty Picture, Ishiqya, No One Killed Jessica to name a few.
Kahaani was a movie with a simple story of a pregnant woman running in the streets of Kolkata, in search of her husband. But the way the narrative was lensed with the plot twist in the end, made all the difference in making that film one of Vidya’s career best performances.
Sujoy added to this saying, “I wrote it for Vidya.”
Speaking to a leading daily, Vidya mentioned, “Sujoy came to me with a script I didn’t want to do but he told me he would keep coming to me till I said yes. I thought he wouldn’t come back but he did, again and again.”
Kahaani was a huge risk for the director, however he decided to follow his gut-feeling and had big names like Saswata Chatterjee and Nawazuddin Siddiqui on board who played crucial roles in the film. He reiterated, “When you look on paper, Kahaani is everything that a film should not be.”
Sujoy Ghosh also shared how people had no faith in the context. However, he never gave up.
“My heart was set on it though people discouraged me and a lot of things happened. You get discouraged at every turn in your life but once your heart is set on something it is very hard to do anything else and that’s what happened to me,”
Adding onto this, Vidya mentioned how there were a lot of people who were hesitant,”Why would audiences want to see a pregnant woman in theatres?”
However the success of the film put all murmurs to rest. A few years later Kahaani 2 released, even though the success couldn’t be of the same magnitude, it then led to Bob Biswas – an OTT release which eventually resulted in making a whole universe of the franchise in itself.
