Actor Sonali Bendre says she had packed her bags and was ready to leave the film industry if she couldn't do a great performance in the song Humma Humma from Mani Ratnam's 1995 movie Bombay.
Bendre said choreographers often slammed her for her moves until she got a breakthrough for her stint as the female dancer in the superhit track Humma Humma alongside Prabhu Deva's brother Raju Sundaram.
Bendre said it was a common belief that one couldn't become a heroine if they didn't know how to dance. She said she wanted to give it a shot since the legendary Prabhu Deva choreographed it.
"I'm not a trained dancer. When I got into movies, I really got slammed by dance directors for my dancing. Badi heroine banne chali hai, dancing nahi aata. So, if you couldn't dance, you couldn't be a heroine. I was going through all that, so whatever time I would get before and after the shoot, I started to train in 'Bollywood dancing', as it's called.
"This was more like, ‘Let's do this'. This is with Prabhu Deva because if I can do it, I have a right to be here and if I can't, pack your bags and leave. At that point of time, it was like, ‘(At least) My team would earn their per-day (money),'" Bendre told PTI in an interview.
She recalled that Prabhu Deva's father, choreographer master Mugur Sundar, was so impressed by her skills that he gave her Rs 100 as a reward.
"The best part was I was dancing with Prabhu Deva's brother Raju and Sundar master ji. Their father was (also) on the set. Mani Ratnam sir always did huge long shots, so we did everything in one go. After we did one of the things (shots), Sundar master ji took out 100 bucks and gave it to me and said, ‘You did so well'. I was like, ‘I don't need a certificate from anybody else, I'm here'."
Bendre went on a seven-year hiatus when she was diagnosed with cancer in 2018 and returned to acting with the first season of “The Broken News”, which premiered in 2022. The second chapter of the newsroom drama will premiere on May 3.
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