Sonakshi Sinha is back, this time with comedy flick Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi, which is the second installment of the Happy Bhag Jayegi franchise.
The film, helmed by Mudassar Aziz, is garnering mixed reviews. In an interview with My Nation, the 31-year-old has revealed that she never let body shaming get the better of her all these years while she worked at her own lifestyle and film choices.
The actress, who has shed quite a few kilos and looks fitter now, said, “For so many years if there is anyone who has been subjected to it, it’s me. But I have not reacted to it. It makes me do better. It challenges me. For so many years I looked a certain way, which is not wrong, which is very normal. If you see regular girls, they all look like that. But only because I was in the film industry and I did not look like the rest of them, I was subjected to a lot of body shaming. It was negative but I turned it into a positive.”
She added, “If I had let it affect me, I don’t think I would have reached where I am today. Directors would not want to work with me, producers wouldn’t want to sign me for their films, but they still did. Also, the audience wouldn’t have accepted me. This is what I keep in mind rather than a few negatives. If there are ten negative things, there are a hundred positive things which you should concentrate on. That’s what I did.”
Then why did she lose weight, you wonder. “If you see a change in me right now, it’s not because of what people have been telling me, it’s because it came from within. I started working out; I changed my lifestyle because I wanted to. I started seeing the results, I started getting happier.”
Sonakshi revealed she was the original choice for the first outing in the series as well. She said, “Mudassar had approached me to play Happy in part one but at the time I was doing Akira. So, I didn’t have the dates to do that film, which is when Diana (Penty) came into the picture. When I heard that they are making part two, I had a feeling that Mudassar is going to come back to me and he did. He was adamant that he wanted me to play Happy this time for sure. I immediately said yes.”
Does comedy come naturally to her? The Dabangg girl said, “I enjoy it. In fact, a lot of people don’t find it easy but I find comedy the easiest. It probably also comes from the kind of person that I am, my personality. I am a funny person by nature. I love to laugh; I love to make people laugh. Even if you put me in a serious situation, in my head I’ll make it funny. I don’t think very seriously in life. I just like to be happy and positive all the time. So, maybe that’s why it comes to me easily.”
Sonakshi made a big debut with Salman Khan in Dabangg (2010) but of late has delivered several flops like Akira and Noor. What does she feel about her career graph? “The films that I did in the beginning of my career gave me the kind of reach that people get after 10-20 years in the industry. I got that within my first three years. The kind of films that I did gave me the confidence to do movies like Akira and Noor that were dependent completely on me. So, for me, honestly, it has been a very fruitful experience, working the way I have worked, doing the kind of films that I have done. Today I am in a position where I can still choose to do the kind of films that I want to do, the ones that make me happy as an actor.” She will next be seen in Kalank and Dabangg 3.
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