Actor Aditi Rao Hydari had a very busy 2021, and it appears like she will have a packed 2022 as well. Her next release, Tamil film Hey Sinamika, has been ready for a year now, is all set for a theatrical release. The actor, however, adds that because of the pandemic, one must always be prepared for sudden and unexpected changes.
“Even today, before any release, I get butterflies, because you don’t know what is going to happen, how it is going to go. Also, people’s relationship with theatres seems to be kind of different, we don’t know how they are going to respond, if they are going to theatres,” expresses the 35-year-old.
Hydari’s last few releases have been direct to OTT — The Girl on the Train, Sardaar Ka Grandson and the segment Geeli Puchhi in Ajeeb Daastaans (all 2021). Ask her if she prefers a theatrical release instead, and she says, “Today, I would not say I prefer one over the other, but each film has it’s destiny. There’s a way in which a film is made sometimes. Some are made for that big screen experience. As somebody who has been enchanted by them (cinemas), they are an escape from the world, you are shut out from the world. People, in a theatre,are kind of unreachable, you look up to them on that large screen.”
Point out to her that the popularity of web platforms has also changed the game now, and the actor agrees. “In the last two years, a lot of my theatrical films went to OTT. I was disappointed [at first], but then I saw how you become so close to people, it is so intimate in the home space. Also, there is a lot of stuff available on OTT to watch.”
