‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ actress Dalai: ‘Shah Rukh Khan is one of our country’s biggest superstars, would love to do films like Jab We Met & 12th Fail’

Women directing women and girls definitely has to be different from men directing women and girls. Filmmaker Nitya Mehra’s show Big Girls Don’t Cry that’s now streaming on Amazon Prime Video is not as glossy as Aisha or as messy as Veere Di Wedding, and yet, it takes on the charm of friendship, the complexities of growing up, the ghosts not of the past but the future, and the flaws of the present.

It’s an ensemble and one of the actors in this series is Dalai. In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, she spoke about her experience of working with Nitya Mehra again, her prep for the role she played, and her wish to do films like Jab We Met and 12th Fail .

Edited excerpts from the interview

When was the first seed of acting sown?

So I actually, had it sown, I think, by, my mother. She came to me when I was very young, and, you know, I think this audition had just come across her consciousness. And, she said, you know, there’s this audition for this film, and it’s a big film, and it’s, Yashraj. And I didn’t know any of these names or anything because, obviously, I was a child. I was like, I don’t know if I want to do this audition. And she said, well, you know, if you do it and if you get this role, you get, 3 months off of school. And I was like, my god. I must do this. There’s nothing that’s going to stop me.

So after auditioning for this film Aaja Nach Le, which is Madhuri Dixit’s comeback film. It honestly was all those years ago. Just being on a set and seeing all these amazing performers like, you know like Vinay Pathak, Irrfan Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Like, there’s so many amazing, amazing people I got to watch and Madhuri herself, you know, just like one of the superstars of Bollywood. To just see them all doing what they do, I think it was just it was just something struck me. Like you said, it was a bug. And, even though I then went back to school and I didn’t become, like, a full blown child actor, there was always a small part of me that was like, I definitely think I want do this. But somewhere in the process of schooling, I was like, it’s not so reliable. I shouldn’t do it necessarily. And for some reason, I thought the reliable option was to become a visual artist. I was like, I’ll be a painter. That’s a very reliable career. But then in the 11th grade, I was applying to a performing art school or an art school in essence, and I was applying to the visual arts stream. And, there was some admin error, and I got sorted into the performing arts stream instead. And I just I had a full panic for some reason. I was like, how can this happen? What will we do? And my mom kept telling me, like, it’s not that big of a deal. We’ll just tell them. There was an error. And I was like, no. It’s so scary. And I’ll never forget. She said this one thing to me. She said, what would you do in your life? What would you do with your life if you knew you would succeed?

Big Girls Don’t Cry is an ensemble. So how did you prepare for this role? How was it being directed by Nitya Mehra?

So, Big Girls Don’t Cry happened because I heard about it, through the grapevine. Of course, you’re always, you know, hitting the ground and reaching out to people and casting directors and everything. So you hear about these projects. So I heard about it, and I really wanted to audition for it. And, you know, luckily, Nitya had been my showrunner on Made in Heaven. So she reached out to her after obviously auditioning 1, 2, 3 times. I was like, hi. Just letting you know that I’ve tested and, you know, I hope you will consider me. And just the auditioning process took a very long time. It all like was a year but with a few months in between, as they were, like, rewriting and all sorts of things. And, in terms of prep, once I had booked the role, there were workshops that we did to create, like, a bond between all the girls and, you know, really because it’s so important when you’re doing a show where you’re basically trusting the audience to believe and assume that these girls have all been friends for 6 years before you meet them. And to create that chemistry not create necessarily, but hopefully build on chemistry between all these girls that you’re hoping that the audience will believe have been friends for, you know, almost a decade in this boarding school. And luckily, this was just, like, the perfect storm because it’s not often that you meet one actor even that you have, like, brilliant chemistry with, but somehow we managed to find 7 girls who just had the most amazing chemistry altogether. Like, as soon as we met each other, we just hit it off. So that was the prep we did collectively.

You worked with Pooja Bhatt in this series. You have worked with Madhuri Dixit. You have worked with, Irrfan Khan. So when you work with such seasoned actors, veterans, what is the one thing that you take away from them?

I think, you know, more than anything else because I think there are the obvious things such as performance and, you know, belief in yourself and this very, very intense comfort in who you are. Those I feel are things that everyone will pick up on them even if people even if they’ve only had a 5 minute conversation with these people because I think the amount of yours you spend asserting yourself in these really, you know, strong and silent ways that just that just develops. But I think one of the biggest things that I’ve learned from all three of these people is kindness and how you conduct yourself in these environments because I think there’s this thing that people say, you know, You can have talent and you can have, you know, this raw thing in you that’ll get you into rooms and might book a few roles because you’re so bright and you’re so talented. But what will trump talent is hard work. And I think what even Trump’s hard work is how you make people feel around you. And I think every single person who has persevered in this industry, and I think in any industry, has persevered and has had long and, you know, enduring careers has been because they understand that everyone is here to do the same job. Everybody is on the same footing, and everybody should be treated equally and kindly and, you know, with the m same respect that you’ll afford a superstar, you should afford everybody else on set because everybody’s here giving the same hours and the same effort and more sometimes. So I definitely think I definitely think it’s that. It’s kindness. I mean, one of our biggest superstars, if not our biggest superstar Shah Rukh Khan, everybody always talks about how he comes on set and introduces himself to everyone and it and says that, you know, hello. I am Shah Rukh, you know. There’s never any airs about him. So I think that’s a really, really big and important one to never forget no matter how successful you get.

And lastly, now what is your future plan as an actor? What are the kind of scripts or the characters that you want you want to play, you want to essay, you are looking for?

So I mean, I’ve recently been on a romantic comedy kick.

You know, I’m I absolutely love romantic comedies, especially ones from the nineties, and I feel like I feel like our collective industry has not we’re not doing that so much. So I would love more than anything to do just like such like, a joyful romantic comedy, like a Jab We Met or something because I feel like we don’t do that enough, anymore. But, I’m also I am not somebody whoever restricts myself necessarily to finding a particular kind of role next. The only restriction I place upon myself is not doing the same thing, you know, back to back. So be it, you know, something that’s very, very specific, specific, you know, heartwarming story, like a 12th Fail or something more expansive and, like, wild, like Laapataa Ladies or something. I would love to work with, you know, Sanjay Leela Bhansali one day. He’s a dream director of mine.