Pia Bajpiee will next be seen in filmmaker Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s LOST. The Free Press Journal caught up with Pia for an exclusive chat.
Pia shares how she bagged the film. “Ever since Pink released, I wanted to work with him, but I had never thought I would ever get an opportunity. I was in Kashmir when I got a call from the casting director, and he said Aniruddha sir has called me for an audition. Sometimes it happens that things don’t work out the way you want. Sometimes you’re so frustrated that you feel you don’t want anything. I was going through that phase when LOST came to me. I didn’t want to leave Kashmir and come to Mumbai. After 10 days, I came back and met him, and that’s when reality hit me, and I realised what I was getting into. I heard the story and immediately said yes to him,” Pia says.
Pic: Twitter/@aniruddhatony / Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury
Elaborating on her experience of working with the filmmaker, Pia gushes, “He doesn’t give the direction like, ‘Aise karo vaise karo’. He tells the situation and asks the actors to perform. If he’s not okay with it, he will tell. I’ve done several films, but with him, it was working as well as learning. Many a times, I felt, ‘Oh, I haven’t thought from this angle’. So working with him was like I was attending an institute.”
Without divulging many details about her role, Pia says that it is a powerful one. “I’m sure every girl or boy who has come from a small town to a big city will relate to my character. It relates to every person who wants to achieve something in life. Even I come from the small city of Etawah in UP. So, when I heard the narration, I felt, oh, this is me. Also, I honestly didn’t have to work much on my character, and the director also asked me to not act but just to be myself (laughs),” Pia explains.
Pia has been a part of the entertainment industry for over 10 years. She was just 15 when she left home and went to Delhi and later came to Mumbai. She worked in Delhi as a receptionist for two to three months. “It was tough for me to come to Mumbai. I spent two nights at the Delhi railway station because I had no idea how to reach Mumbai. Somehow I managed to reach but then I didn’t get a place to stay. Someone asked me to go to Andheri. But when I went there, the owner of the apartment said there was no place, so she asked me if I was ready to manage in a very, very small room where she used to keep her dog. I stayed there for over nine months with that dog because I had no other option. Nowadays, even toilets are bigger than that room. After that, I had no idea where to go. But I knew that after all the struggle, something good would definitely happen,” Pia recalls.
“It becomes easy if you meet the right people at the right time. It was a struggle initially, but slowly, everything fell in place. It has been a learning process. People are so desperate these days to get work that they are willing to do anything for it, which is sad,” she avers.
Pia has zero regrets about leaving her hometown. “Honestly, I just had to leave Etawah. In my family, everybody is a teacher. So I used to think that if I stayed there, I’d also end up being a teacher. I don’t know how the thought of coming to Mumbai came to me. Never in my family had any girl been out of Etawah. I had no idea what I’ll be doing in the future, but I had that fire in me,” she signs off.
