After Kho Gaye Hum Kahan, Ananya Panday says she wants to do more big commercial massy cinema

22/01/2024

Ananya Panday aka Ahaana is basking in the success of her latest OTT release Kho Gaye Hum Kahan and she feels very “happy, grateful, and full of love.”
“I am feeling validated not just as an actor but validated with the choice I made to go with the film and the choices I made in it as Ahaana,” says Panday as the Arjun Varain Singh directorial received praise for being ‘relatable’. “I am feeling happy that people saw it, noticed small things that I did in the film and liked it. More than anything, they found comfort in my character,” she further adds.
Reflecting on the unexpected love the film received, the 25-year-old shares, “Somewhere, we were proud and excited about it, but never expected that it would go to this level of love, which is a really good thing. We all discussed this that the film felt theatrical because we got such quick responses, everyone watched it instantly around New Year’s.”
The film, which explores the dynamics of modern relationships in the age of social media, struck a chord with the audience. Panday highlights, “When we all signed up as actors, we related to every bit of the film so much.
People found very small details relatable for them, including their interaction, how they spend time, hangouts at specific places, and just the way that the world is right now - like social media is the fourth character in everyone’s life now and how relationships have been affected in this time.”
Ask her if the trio of him, Adarsh Gaurav, and Siddhant Chaturvedi share the same tight camaraderie off screen and she says, “We are the same off screen as everyone saw on their screens. Sid and Aadarsh are Neil and Amaad now, I won’t be able to see them any other way. We did a lot of workshops together because our director wanted to ensure that everything looks natural.”
“The ultimate icebreaker was when we went to Goa to shoot the first song ‘Hone Do Jo Hota Hai’, which I actually recorded on my phone.
They gave us scooters and sent us to bars and beaches. All of it was actually happening and I just happened to record all of it on my phone and we made a song out of it,” Panday reveals.
Ask the Gehraiyan actor how she takes the conjecture about her personal and professional life on social media and she shares: “I have grown up in a time of social media.
When I was a teenager, that’s the time when Instagram and other social media platforms started. I don’t really know a world without it,” and continues, “Before I became an actor, I was always posting, but it was just with 10-15 of my friends in a private account, I used to really enjoy sharing things about my life during the beginning.
But now as I have gotten older and started working more, I feel the phase that I am in right now, I am preferring a little bit more privacy, not just personally but even professionally. Now, I am more excited for my work to come out and people to just watch that rather than putting something out there.
It honestly depends on the person, everyone has to deal with social media in the way they are most comfortable with. It’s kind of a beast that we all have to take for what it is rather than taking it too seriously.”
After playing the soft innocent girl in several past projects, inlcuding Dream Girl 2, how do future projects look for Panday? “I want to do characters that are neither black nor white, but grey. It is so easy to stereotype people nowadays, I want to be on the middle ground somewhere. I want to do characters that of how people are actually in real life, some real characters. People should be able to relate with me,” she answers, adding, “I have just started out and there is so much that I want to do. It is a longer journey ahead. I want to do big commercial massy cinema because I also love watching that as an audience. I also want to do a biopic of a sportsperson or a classical singer or dancer, something where I have to learn a specific skill for something.”

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