Director Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal is primarily a story of Ranbir Kapoor’s character and his father, played by Anil Kapoor. But the film also had an important character of Ranbir’s mother Jyoti, which was convincingly played by Charu Shankar. Not many would know that she is just a year elder to Ranbir in real life.
This never deterred her from doing the film. In an exclusive video interview with a noted Bollywood web portal, Charu said, “Why would I say no? Why would any actor say no to any project? Why would I refuse? And this was a very exciting opportunity. I knew the cast; I knew the film. When Sandeep narrated the story, I thought it was very interesting and very different. And he told me from the word go that I want you to play a very crucial part of my film; I want you to establish very quickly what the central conflict in the film is. And I was sold on that. I said yeah because I understand storytelling and drama. So, when he said this to me, I was like, that’s amazing.”
But there was some funny conflict when Charu travelled to Mumbai to meet Vanga for the first time. She said, “Sandeep walks in, crosses us and goes to his office. He calls in his AD and asks, ‘Who’s that?’” When Vanga was told that she is Charu Shankar and he had asked for a meeting, he was stunned to see how young she looked and said, “That’s Charu Shankar? Okay!” He asked her to come in. She added, “As soon as I came in, he said, ‘Nice to meet you, thank you for coming all the way. But I have to tell you you are too young (laughs).’”
But Charu told him that since she is here, she would like to hear the script. “He, very sweetly, narrated the kahaani and said, ‘This is the role and it’s very important for me in the story.’ He said, ‘Within the first five minutes this central conflict should be established and you are perfect for that. But then the little boy grows up and becomes Ranbir, then what do we do?’”
Charu continued, “I told him, ‘Sandeep, I am an actor and I love the craft of acting and I would like to take this up as a challenge and FYI this is what I have done.’” She had already shot Rocket Boys where she played India’s former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and she had her pictures in the get-up on her phone. After seeing her look as Indira Gandhi, Sandeep was shocked to know that she can look this way too.
Charu added, “He said, ‘Maybe this can happen.’ And he said that initially he thought maybe he will need to use two actresses because the film goes through a journey. He said that maybe we can do this.”
Vanga then thanked her for visiting and she left. But for six months, she didn’t hear from him. Charu added, “And six months later I get a call saying, ‘You have been finalized.’ Then Sandeep called me that very day and said ‘Thank you for saying yes because I met so many people; hundreds of actors for this role. I never forgot how different you looked sitting across the table and in the phone (as Indira Gandhi).’”
Charu got on the board and the rest, as they say, is history. Animal is produced by T-Series, Cine1 Studios and Bhadrakali Pictures and minted close to Rs 1000 crore at the box office.