'Barfi' director initially called Priyanka Chopra's casting a 'mistake'

Priyanka Chopra has played many glamourous roles in her almost 20-year-long Bollywood career but the autistic Jhilmil, in Anurag Basu’s Barfi remains one of her most admired characters.

In an old interview, the actor once admitted that Basu didn’t feel convinced about casting her and wanted to look for someone else, reported Hindustan Times.

The Quantico actor told Anupama Chopra that when Basu came to see her at her house and saw her in a glamourous avatar (she had just returned from an event), he said, “I don’t know if this can happen, I think I’ll go. I think I made a mistake. I think I should cast a real autistic girl only. This is a stupid idea. How can I expect Priyanka Chopra to do this… look at you!” The film-maker had wanted someone who was very innocent and believable.

But Chopra asked Basu to give her five days and do a workshop to see if she could actually play the role of an autistic girl. “We did a four-day workshop. I spent a lot of time with autistic children, did a lot of research and reading. There is such a range of autism; we had no reference for Jhilmil. First, we decided the pyjamas because autistic people are like kids.”

She said they had to create the scenes from scratch as they didn’t have any lines and it was completely impromptu. “It is bizarre to me how Barfi got made. I don’t even know,” Chopra confessed, while talking about how they created a forehead touching scene to show a connection between Jhilmil and Barfi. As per the starlet, it was her idea as any other couple would have kissed to show love for each other but autistic people don’t like physical proximity.

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