Stayed on wheelchair the whole time I was on set: Anushka on preparing to play a woman with cerebral palsy
Anushka Sharma is playing a scientist with cerebral palsy in the upcoming SRK-starrer Zero and she says that she underwent a rigourous three-month preparation process to lend authenticity to her performance.
In a statement, Sharma said that she worked with two professional trainers to immerse herself into her role as Aafia.
“If I were able to pull [the role] off, I would have accomplished something. I wanted to do it the right way and represent this correctly. Aanand sir and Himanshu (writer Himanshu Sharma) had already researched a lot with doctors (about this condition) when they came to me with the film and had sketched out my character accordingly. I understood their brief and went with their vision and met with the doctors,” she added.
She said she worked with an occupational therapist and audiologist who helped her understand “what physical limitation my character would have and how my condition would impact my speech”.
“The difficult part in this was that I had to voluntarily create an involuntary movement that happens to my character because of my condition. While I had to focus on the dialogues, I also had focus on the emotion of the scene, which was difficult. So, in the beginning I would ask for some extra takes so that I could get it right because I wanted to make sure that I was doing it correctly,” added Anushka.
Anushka also spent time on a wheelchair, staying seated the whole time she was on set. "I did all this to understand the confinements one feels when one has to spend a lifetime on a wheelchair."
“I think all this practice helped in understanding the condition of the character well and the vision that Aanand L. Rai had for the role. I have tried to do it to the T,” she concluded.
