Bipasha Basu at Park Plaza on Monday Pictures: Rashbehari Das

Bipasha Basu was in town on Monday to promote Aatma, her horror film made with “a lot of heart”. Set for a March 22 release, Aatma has the Ballygunge bombshell playing a mother trying to save her five-year-old from her dead husband (played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui). t2 caught up with Bips on the film directed by Suparn Verma.

Aatma is coming in with quite a buzz…

You get a vibe of a film from the trailer and the day we released the trailer, it went viral. The kind of appreciation we got through Twitter and Facebook has been strong. Even the in-trade buzz has been extremely strong. We are very excited because we have made a very good film… it’s all heart. When people talk about the supernatural, they only think one-dimensionally. But Aatma is a film that has got various layers. I’ve put in everything I have into this film and normally, you won’t find me saying this but this is a film that needs to be watched.

Also, to play a mother isn’t easy. I am 100 per cent sure that it isn’t easy to be a mother and now I can tell you that even playing one isn’t a cakewalk!

Your last release Raaz 3 was also a horror film. Why this sudden fascination for this genre?

I know this is coming from the fact that Raaz 3 and Aatma are releasing back-to-back. In the 13 years of my career, I have just done about four horror films (five is the exact number: Raaz, Rakht, Darna Zaroori Hai, Raaz 3 and now Aatma). When you compare it to the 20 romances or the 30-odd thrillers I have done, that’s hardly a ratio. In fact, I feel that horror as a genre hasn’t been tapped in our movies at all and we should be encouraged if we are trying to do something with it. When people ask me ‘Why another horror film?’ I tell them ‘Why not?’

Aatma is an entertaining film, it’s given me great scope to perform… I am not a hero’s accessory here… I don’t have to look pretty and dance around. I have done enough of that. In our business here, you don’t have great roles written for us women. One Kahaani doesn’t change the fact that out of the 500 films Bollywood makes in a year, only two will be made with a woman as the central character. So if a supernatural film is giving me the opportunity that we actresses don’t get, there is no reason why I wouldn’t jump at it.

I am asked frequently whether I am scared of being typecast. But I have to tell you that I am someone who has always been very experimental and gone against the grain. I started off with a grey role in Ajnabee… something no actress would dream of debuting with. Then I did an adult film Jism when no one could have thought of it.

Do you believe in the supernatural?

I don’t believe in spirits, but when I was a kid, I used to be quite a brat aar Ma Baba bhooter kotha bole bhishon bhoy dekhato (would scare me with ghost tales)! (Laughs) They didn’t know of any other way to control me and I think that phobia somehow built in my head as I grew up. I am scared of darkness… I hate being lonely… I am petrified of walking on the road alone. Even if you come from behind and say ‘boo’ to me, I will get scared.

How much did you have to stretch yourself as an actor to play a mother constantly on an emotional edge?

Totally. I discovered a side of me that is all ready to be a mom (smiles). I never knew I had such strong maternal feelings in me till I played a mother to Doyel (Dhawan). I spent so many hours on set with her. One day, she fell asleep on set and I was like, ‘Suparn, what do we do now?’ And Suparn simply said, ‘Bipasha, we wait’. And so we waited and waited and I was like, ‘That hasn’t happened before… no co-star of mine has gone off to sleep while shooting!’ (Laughs) A child has so many moods and we had to adjust accordingly. There was this very emotional scene where I had to scream at her and shake her up and I was worried how she would take it because we had built up a rapport by then. These kind of maternal feelings in me are very natural. That’s why the mom-daughter thing in the film feels so real. Our scenes are written out beautifully. Also, my scenes with Nawaz are so well written… the dysfunctional marriage, the tension. These are things that happen for real in people’s lives.

Did changing Doyel’s screen name from Priya to Nia, after your niece, help in building the bond?

Initially I thought it would. Before I met the kid, I was insistent with Suparn that the name Priya had to be changed to Nia because Nia is my most favourite person in the world. I am just crazy about my niece. But when I met Doyel, I saw what a cute kid she is and our attachment grew every day. Even if she wasn’t called Nia, I am sure the bond between Doyel and me would have been as strong.

The Bipasha-Nawaz pairing is also grabbing eyeballs…

When you work with a good actor, it’s always going to be good. He’s a thorough gentleman and so quiet by nature. Suparn and I are a little mad and when Nawaz came on the sets, I am sure he must have been amused by the two of us. But when we worked together, we gelled so well. There was a lot of give and take between us as actors. We had great scenes together, most of them major breakdown scenes. I remember that one scene where our characters had reached the limit of what humiliation in a marriage means and at the end of it, I was on the floor and I was literally howling. Suparn actually had to clear the set and I was crying on the floor for 30 minutes. We actually reached that level of reality where I started thinking, ‘What if this was my real life?’

You’ve recently said that you only want to do commercial cinema…

Yes, that’s true. I now want to do entertaining films with good roles because I want more and more people to watch my films. I remember there was this one year where I was only doing offbeat roles and no one saw them. I was perhaps the only one who watched those films! (Laughs)

Priyanka Roy