Vibe marks Preity Zinta’s second film since her comeback with Batwara 1947. Earlier, she had revealed that when she was approached for the Sunny Deol starrer, she flatly told producer Aamir Khan that she was no longer working and was inclined to turn the offer down. But when it came to the Kunal Kemmu directorial, she didn’t take too long before giving it a positive nod.
Speaking exclusively to News18, she says that it was Farhan Akhtar who had informed her of Vibe and had implied that she was the right fit for the part of Madam H. “I didn’t take a long time to say yes. This film was actually mentioned to me by Farhan first. He told me that it’s a really nice script that I should hear it. Then I heard it and really liked it,” she says.
And what
truly convinced her to take on the film was Kunal’s work in Madgaon Express. “After that, I watched Madgaon Express. I hadn’t watched it earlier. I really liked it. I liked where his humour was and decided to give it a shot.” Interestingly, Kunal had first envisioned Preity playing herself in his latest directorial but eventually, gave up on the idea.
Talking about it, he tells us, “This was when I hadn’t started writing the film. I was still breaking it down in my head in terms of the scenes I wanted and what the interval point should be. As appealing as the idea of having Preity play herself in the film felt to me, I realised that it would become difficult to differentiate between reality and fiction because it’s so outlandish in certain ways.”
And he didn’t want to do a ‘disservice’ to either Preity or the film. “It would definitely be a cool concept if I was making a reel or a short film, but to sell that idea over an entire film, I would’ve to digress a lot from the plot. Hence, that idea quickly faded away. But I’m happy I had that in my head because I suddenly saw her playing Madam H,” he remarks.
Preity, however, had no idea that Kunal first wanted her to play a version of herself in Vibe. And once she learnt that she would get to do action in it, she was sold. “I didn’t know about this but when he came and narrated the film to me and said that he wrote the part keeping me in mind, my ears suddenly became bigger. When I came to know there was action involved, I got very excited,” she shares.
Kunal, on the other hand, had his share of doubts about Preity saying a yes as she was away from Bollywood for more than a decade. “It was a bit of a shot in the dark. There was always this possibility that she would say no. But I wasn’t going to call her and tell her, ‘Ma’am, are you doing my film? No? I’ve your kids.’ That was never how the conversation was going to be like (laughs),” he says.
