Daily Times

Bollywood star Deepika Padukone, who is riding high on the box office success of Padmaavat, will soon start working on her next with Vishal Bhardwaj, a film on gangster Sapna Didi aka 80s Mafia queen Ashraf Khan. The film, which will feature Irrfan Khan as Deepika’s onscreen husband, has been titled Rani.

Deepika has started her preparation for the role and the media quoted a source as saying, “Deepika has already started the preparation for her role of a mafia queen and she is quite particular that she gets the tonality and body language as close to the late Sapna Didi who was once a terror for other gangsters. The shoot will begin by early March in Mumbai. After Padmaavat, her fans will love to see her in a whole new avatar of a lady don and hence she is really working meticulously to strike the right chord.”

Attempts to contact filmmaker Bhardwaj went unanswered.

Initially, Honey Trehan was supposed to direct the film and Vishal was producing it. However, certain creative differences led to Vishal stepping in for the director’s job. “Due to different artistic visions of the film, Honey (Trehan) and I jointly came to the decision that it would be best if I took over as director and saw it through to the end,” Bhardwaj said in a statement. While Irrfan has worked with Vishal in films like Maqbool and Saat Khoon Maaf, the upcoming project will be Deepika’s first with the filmmaker. Deepika and Irrfan worked together in the critically acclaimed Piku.

Published in Daily Times, February 18^th 2018.