She’s been waiting for this movie for a long long time. In fact, Tanushree Dutta had done the item number Signal in Bhagam Bhag just as a goodwill gesture so that Priyadarshan would cast her as a leading lady for another movie. So he did and she became the Dhol heroine. Now that Dhol is ready for release, Tanushree has accounted for all the nails on her fingers.

“No, no I am not worried,” she says. “I am just very excited. It’s a very important film for me and not just me, everyone has a lot of expectations from the movie. We always try to make every film better than the last one and hopefully here too we can do better than Bhagam Bhag.”

While the Signal song saw Tanushree at her glamorous best, for Dhol she is just a simple girl. “Yes, I have the girl-next-door look in the film,” she confirms. “Priyanji wanted it that way. My character is very rich but she chooses to live a simple life. So while she has many cars at home she drives around in a scooty. She is a simple girl living with her grandparents.”

And she is chased by four out-of-work guys. Now, doesn’t that sound like Golmaal or what? “No, it’s not,” retorts Tanushree. “Why would someone in his right senses remake a film that released quite recently? Had it been an old classic I could have understood but no, Dhol is no Golmaal. If I could tell you the story then you would have realised. But I am not allowed to divulge anything now.”

But we thought Dhol was a comedy. “It is, but there is also a thrill factor involved,” says Tanushree. “As of now all I can say is that the dhol is the most important character in the film. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Well, I like it that way. You have to watch the film to find out why the dhol is so important.”

One thing’s for sure though — that Sharman Joshi, Tusshar Kapoor, Kunal Khemu and Rajpal Yadav are all chasing Tanushree. “It always feels good to have good-looking men chasing you around,” laughs the bombshell from Jamshedpur. “But in the film it’s so much fun to see all these four guys trying to woo me and doing these crazy things in the process.”

While this was the first time Tanushree was working with Kunal and Rajpal, she had worked with Tusshar (in Good Boy Bad Boy) and Sharman (in Raqeeb) before. “All five of us enjoyed an excellent rapport,” Tanushree reveals. “They were all very young and vibrant and all of us were very enthusiastic to make this project really special.”

Tanushree is completely bowled over by Priyadarshan’s skill behind the camera. “He is fabulous,” she purrs. “He is very sharp and his greatest strength is in the kind of detailing he goes into. We got to learn so many things during the shoot. Also, he has his very unique way of working.”

So how vital is Dhol for her career graph? “I am not expecting the world to break or a volcano to erupt when the film releases but if those things do happen, I do not mind,” she smiles. “The point is I am not the kind of person who believes that his or her film will have a soul-stirring or earth-shattering effect. The film will be out there for you to see and if the audiences like it, I couldn’t be happier.”

What’s next? Tanushree says she is “reading a lot of scripts”. That’s never a good thing. And that means that Dhol better work for her because there’s not much to fall back on.