Actor Siddhant Chaturvedi on how 'Gehraiyaan' made him a better person

The film, which also stars Deepika Padukone and Ananya Panday, is out just before Valentine's Day

Siddhant Chaturvedi and Ananya Panday in 'Gehraiyaan'. All photos: Amazon Studios

In the film, Chaturvedi plays Zain, who falls in love with his fiancee's cousin, Alisha, played by Deepika Padukone.

Deepika Padukone and Ananya Panday play cousins in 'Gehraiyaan'.

Dhairya Karwa, who is in the role of Alisha's boyfriend Karan, in the film.

Naseeruddin Shah plays the father of Deepika Padukone's character.

Padukone and director Shakun Batra on set.

Chaturvedi says his character Zain is a complex, layered one.

Dhairya Karwa on set. He plays the boyfriend of Deepika Padukone's Alisha.

Deepika Padukone, Ananya Panday and Rajat Kapoor on the sets of 'Gehraiyaan'.

If there’s one thing that can be said about director Shakun Batra’s new film Gehraiyaan, it’s that its leads – Bollywood actors Siddhant Chaturvedi, Deepika Padukone, Ananya Panday, and Dhairya Karwa – seem to feel keenly for it.

In some ways, that makes almost poetic sense, given that the word "gehraiyaan" translates to "depths" in English. The film’s extended trailer has only been released, and it’s piqued social media interest, at the very least.

By the looks of it, Gehraiyaan, out on Amazon Prime Video on February 11, telegraphs the messiness and theatrics of love, especially the kind that is universally understood and accepted to be the illicit, wrong kind.

Unhappy-without-really-knowing-it, stuck-in-a-rut, Alisha Khanna (Padukone) stirs up a hornet’s nest by falling for her cousin Tia’s (Panday) fiance Zain (Chaturvedi), while in a six-year-long relationship with Karan (Dhairya).

The betrayal for Tia is two-fold, as Zain reciprocates her cousin’s feelings. The movie ebbs and flows with the conflicting emotions that run through the two cheating lovers as they pursue each other, and the many kinds of hurts they inflict, in the process, on the partners they are wronging.

It’s hard to root for cheaters. Most people’s natural sympathies would first lie with the blighted Tia, with Karan next in line.

“I was both excited and pensive about this role,” Chaturvedi tells The National. “Zain is definitely more complex and mature than I am. When I heard the story, I was blown away by the freshness of Shakun’s take on relationships. I had no reference point for this version of infidelity. There was no way I was going to let it slip through, no matter how out of my own comfort zone it was."

Infidelity is not an unexplored subject in Bollywood. Heartbreak-through-disloyalty has been immortalised by the industry in all its forms – from vulgar and sexist depictions such as those in Masti and Thank You; meditative reflections such as Arth, Silsila, Masoom and Astitva; and even drama-fuelled portrayals of the kind that made Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, Rustom and Life in a Metro seat-grippers.

So, what can Gehraiyaan tell us that we haven’t already seen and heard?

“Nuance,” Chaturvedi says, after a beat. “I can guarantee you this: everyone in the audience is going to end the film feeling something that is unique to them and their experiences. Gehraiyaan has no social message or moral stand. We’ve only taken the choices made by these characters and put them under the microscope for the audience to make of them what they will.

"I think everyone who watches the film will have different interpretations of what they’ve seen and root for different people as the layers are peeled back, bit by bit. We expect impassioned debates on social media," says Chaturvedi, his excitement apparent as he speaks about the film.

"How you feel and whose ‘side’ you pick could tell you a lot about yourself, because the story clearly doesn’t have a hero or a right or wrong."

The movie’s larger context aside, Gehraiyaan has been an enriching experience for Chaturvedi on an individual level, too. He believes it made him a better actor.

“There’s no greater thrill than really getting into the skin of a character you have nothing in common with. As much as I love romcoms and hope to do them some day, I know the motivations and the head space of a man in love. It’s fun, but it’s not new,” he says.

“Shakun and the writers gave us their vision and gave us a playbook. And then they asked us to find our own meanings within them. It helped me discover depths within my own acting.”

It’s also made him a better person, he claims.

“Doing this film taught me how to find empathy in situations I previously couldn’t. It also made me challenge a lot of my own assumptions about how one should react and how one actually does react when confronted with certain life situations.”

Consequences, as a concept, keep coming up in Chaturvedi’s reflections about Gehraiyaan.

“If there’s one thought that’s stayed with me through the unfolding of this film, it’s that everything has consequences,” he says.

“Everything,” he says again, to emphasise. "At the end of the day, you have to do what feels right for you because you only live once. But you also have to own your choices – even if you’re going against society – and make peace with the consequences that follow.”

Owning your choices. Getting comfortable with the consequences. That’s a tall order for a story, if there ever was one. And regardless of whether Gehraiyaan lives up to the promise, perhaps that’s exactly the kind of film the world needs on Valentine’s Day.

Gehraiyaan releases on February 11 on Amazon Prime Video