Tearful Rekha was reminded of her past while watching Richa Chadha's death scene in Heeramandi, Ali Fazal says she gave her the best compliment

Indian Express

28-05-2025

Ali Fazal has often showered praise on wife Richa Chadha for her brief yet nuanced role of Lajjo in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's period drama Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, which dropped on Netflix India last year. Fazal recently confessed he initially thought he was biased because of his personal connection with Richa, but soon realized how her performance affected not just him, but everyone around him.
'It was absolutely wonderful. I'm such a fan! It's so interesting I was sitting at the premiere, where they do two episodes. So that's exactly when her part is till at. I was totally teary-eyed. I thought okay, maybe it's my bias,' said Fazal, referring to the death scene of Richa's character at the end of episode 2.
In the interview with Galatta Plus, he continued, 'I look on my right, and there's Rekha ji in tears. Of course, she gave her the best compliment, 'Tumne humein humare zamane ki yaad dila di.' I remember she said that.' Interestingly, when Heeramandi was first conceived in the mid-2000s, Rekha was offered the role of Mallikajaan, the brothel madam eventually essayed by Manisha Koirala.
In the show, Richa plays an unrequited sex worker who turns to alcohol after she's rejected by her love interest, played by Adhyayan Suman. In episode 2, after performing a long, evocative dance sequence in front of him and his guests at a mehfil, Chadha ends up dying on her way back in a carriage.
Chadha referred to Lajjo as 'the female Devdas' and admitted she tried method acting by drinking some gin for her drunken dancing sequence. ' I tried drinking on the first day of my solo song, but it didn't work for me. I was better off pretending to be drunk than actually getting a little tipsy. It is a technical job, no matter how much I dance, my dress is so heavy, I have to hit that mark, interact. It was fun for me to do,' she told Zoom.
Bhansali also recalled he got angry at Richa for not pulling off the emotion he wanted during that sequence. So he scolded her, post which she got the emotion right organically. 'The anger on her face was so special. That moment was a result of what I said to her and what she said to me. In all the songs I've shot, big numbers, this is one of the rare moments of the actor feeling the humiliation of the scene that she went through rather than feeling the humiliation of me getting angry and saying, 'How many takes will you want?,'' the director told India Today.
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'Another actor might have stormed off the set in anger, but Richa and I both understood that the shot is more important, the song is more important, the scene is more important, the series is more important than either of us,' added Bhansali.