It’s been more than a decade since romantic-comedy Dostana hit the screens, but Priyanka Chopra’s performance in the film is still fresh in the audience’s memory. Thus, Janhvi Kapoor, who will star in Dostana 2, is prepared for the comparisons that’ll be drawn between her and Priyanka’s performance, despite the stark difference between them and the two films.
Janhvi co-stars Kartik Aaryan and debutante Lakshya in the follow up to the 2008 blockbuster which also featured Abhishek Bachchan and John Abraham.
The original, directed by Tarun Mansukhani, revolves around the story of two heterosexual men [Abhishek and John], who pretend to be queer to share an apartment with a woman [Priyanka]. Both of them are naturally head over heels for her. But Dostana 2 will reportedly see Janhvi and Kartik as siblings falling for the same guy, played by Lakshya, provided that Janhvi’s onscreen brother is actually queer.
The upcoming film has been directed by debutante Collin D’Cunha, who has co-written it with Navjot Gulati, Sumit Arora and Rishabh Sharma.
Janhvi, in a recent conversation with the Indian Express, addressed the pressure she feels stepping into a franchise helmed and remembered by such renowned names. The actor, who turns 24 on Saturday, confessed that the bar set by Priyanka is so high that all she can do is pray she gets “somewhere close to her.”
“Priyanka Chopra was iconic in Dostana. So, there is a responsibility, but it’s another film, completely different. So, I don’t know what I can do. All that I can do [about] the bar, the standard that she has set, [is to try] reach for the stars I guess. Pray to God and hope that [I] get somewhere close.”
Karan Johar, who produced the franchise, previously admitted that the first part had a “caricaturish” representation of homosexuality, something the team has consciously avoided in the upcoming installment. In fact, Karan had said that as a maker, his evolution in terms of depicting homosexuality on screen will reflect in Dostana 2.
“Initially, it [Dostana] was a conversation starter. But today I wouldn’t do that. The evolution is from one Dostana to the other. [It will] talk about sexuality in a way that will not make you cringe. So therein lays the [evidence] that in the last 12 years, there has been a solid change in the way we depict [queer] characters,” the producer assured at the ‘We the Women’ event in December 2019.
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