Sanya Malhotra

Sanya Malhotra has performed a variety of characters on-screen that are similar to reality after her Bollywood debut in 2016 with ‘Dangal.’ She claims that the transformation will just not occur unless a new generation of actors question’stereotypes’ as well as demands that the image of women in the film is changed.

Sanya has appeared in numerous movies since her debut, including ‘Pataakha,’ ‘Photograph,’ ‘Pagglait,’ as well as ‘Meenakshi Sundareshwar,’ to mention a few.

In a conversation with IANS, Sanya said: “I think the kind of character I have acted on-screen so far, as an audience I want to see them because they are the women I have grown up seeing! Whether it is Jyoti, Sandhya, Meenakshi…we are those women. The good thing is, writers are now writing them with empathy and not with sympathy.”

She added that as an audience, she is “demanding the right representation of women on-screen.”

“We really have to break those stereotypes. As an actress of the new generation, I surely feel the responsibility to choose and say the right thing. There are a few things about women in cinema we have just normalised, and maybe it is time for us to question them too. Yes, change is happening but we have a long way to go!”

Sanya’s next film is ‘Love Hostel,’ which is about a young couple named Ashu and Jyoti who married inside an interfaith marriage. They were forced to elope despite their parents’ wishes, as well as the girl’s family’s parents finally chose to pursue them for honour killing.

The 29-year-old actress admitted that the plot of ‘Love Hostel’ was the finest script she read in 2020, and she revealed how tough it was for her to strike the proper tone for the role.

“Our world is so different. Jyoti’s reality is so different from who I am in real life or even the circumstance I have grown up into. The only way we could have done it right is to surrender to the script completely and that is what our director has motivated us to do.”

“Honestly speaking I had no reference point to it, so in some of the scenes in the film where Jyoti was going through some kind of trauma that I could never imagine. Those were tough moments. As an audience, we connect to Ashu and Jyoti with a lot of empathy and what I love about the whole story is, no matter how bad the situation was, they never lose hope,” she concluded.

Shanker Raman directs the movie, which is produced by Red Chillies Entertainment as well as Drishyam Films. On February 25, ZEE5 will premiere ‘Love Hostel,’ which also stars Bobby Deol.

Also Read: Love Hostel, starring Vikrant Massey and Sanya Malhotra, will air on ZEE5