Arjun Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor are excited about Half Girlfriend, their first film together and an adaptation of Chetan Bhagat’s novel with the same title. Arjun says they bonded on the basketball court. “Shraddha is a go-getter and doesn’t give up until she has achieved what she sets out to do,” says Arjun.
Shraddha took time gelling with Arjun. “He’s my brother’s friend, but I got to know him better during the shoot. He was very cool on the sets. He has good sense of humour. He is expressive. I wish I could talk like him, but I stumble a lot. He has an onscreen innocence,” she says.
Half Girlfriend is based on the backdrop of basketball. Says Shraddha, “I was very sporty in school. I participated in 100-metre, 200-metre and 400-metre races, high jump and long jump. I played basketball for two to three hours each day. An NBA player trained us for the film.” Arjun was in his school basketball team because he was tall. “I played defence. I was big built and they took me in the team to scare children from the other team,” he says.
‘Half girlfriend’ for them is a relationship status. “In today’s times, love has become temporary. It’s always about ‘I’. The younger generation is so caught up in their work that they would prefer to have a half girlfriend,” says Arjun.
For Shraddha, love is a commitment, which can’t be fulfilled at times because of situations or circumstances. She had a crush in school, “but never had the courage to talk to him that”, gushes Shraddha, who plays a posh Delhi girl in Half Gilrfriend. “The body language of people from different backgrounds is different. I had to learn the body language and gestures of girls from Delhi’s high society.”
Arjun plays a Bihari boy. “He’s not a caricaturish Bihari guy. He is a sportsman, he wears track pants, shoes and T-shirts. He plays basketball because he wants to get into a good college so that he can help his village. When his principal says his English is weak, he replies, ‘Do you want a good student or one who has learnt the language of another country’,” says Arjun.
Shraddha is also looking forward to Haseena:The Queen of Mumbai, in which she plays don Dawood Ibrahim’s sister Haseena, and another on badminton champion Saina Nehwal’s biopic.
Arjun is awaiting the release of Mubarakan with his uncle Anil Kapoor, a comedy film in which he plays a double role.
‘Half Girlfriend has Pathos and Angst’
Director Mohit Suri has blockbusters Ek Villain and Aashiqui 2 to his credit. About his next film Half Girlfriend, he says, “It’s very difficult to judge your own film. It’s like looking into a mirror and praising yourself. I am happy that hard work of two years has taken shape.” His last movie Hamari Adhuri Kahani bombed at the box office.
How difficult was it for him to chose the next script? “The credit goes to Chetan Bhagat. He gave me the book to read before its launch. He could see I was the most suitable person to make a film on it. It had both pathos and angst,” says the filmmaker. Half Girlfriend also marks Mohit’s debut as a producer. He reunites with his favourite actress Shraddha Kapoor in it.
Skeptics questioned his choice of Arjun Kapoor—who plays the role of a college student from Bihar at Delhi’s St. Stephen’s College—considering the fact that he is born and brought up in Mumbai. “I didn’t know Arjun before the film. I thought of him as the son of a producer and as someone who has not done much in life. When I met him, he was everything I was looking for in the character of Madhav Jha, the protagonist of the film. A single mother who created an identity of her own in a male-dominated industry had brought him up. And he made it on his own by doing his first film,” says Mohit.