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Many have spoken about the dedication late legendary actor Sridevi had towards her craft, but nobody witnessed her process as closely as her husband and producer Boney Kapoor. In a recent interaction, Boney shared how Sridevi, whose mother tongue was Telugu and who started her career in the South film industry, learned Hindi after realising that her performances were being compromised in her Hindi films.
Speaking on the YouTube channel Game Changers, Boney said, “Sri didn’t know Hindi. Her first 5-6 films in Hindi cinema were dubbed, but she felt that her performance was being compromised because of this, so she learned Hindi. She used to have a Hindi teacher in dubbing theatre and she started dubbing Hindi films.”
Boney Kapoor shared how Sridevi’s dedication never diminished and how she remained particular about her work even in her last film Mom, which was bankrolled by Boney himself. Talking about the same, he said, “For the film Mom, she dubbed for the Tamil and Telugu versions, and she even dubbed the Malayalam version a little bit, but she always sat with the Malayalam dubbing artiste to see that dubbing is in sync with the performance. Very few artists have such dedication.”
Sridevi in the film Mom.
When Sridevi sacrificed her fees for AR Rahman
Boney also revealed that Sridevi sacrificed her fees to bring AR Rahman on board for Mom. “During Mom’s shoot, we wanted to take AR Rahman, but he was expensive and we couldn’t afford him. Obviously, we had set aside an amount for Sridevi‘s fees, but she said that I don’t want balance money, which was a substantial amount of Rs 50-70 lakh. She told me not to give her that amount, but to take Rahman for the film instead.”
Lauding her commitment further, Boney shared how Sridevi even refused to share a room with him during Mom’s shoot. “It was the 21st version of the script that we shot for Mom. Most of the film’s shooting we did in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, and then we shot in Georgia, but during this time me and she never shared a room. She told me that she didn’t want to be distracted. She was so obsessed by that character that she didn’t want to be distracted by being a real wife. She wanted to remain the character of mom in the film.”
