What if the person you are most comfortable becoming is someone you have never been? For Kanikka Kapur, that has always been the magic of acting. She discovered it almost by accident in her first year at Delhi University, when a theatre audition opened up her confidence and freedom she did not know she possessed.
In fact, interest in psychology also found an unexpected connection with acting, as she began thinking about her characters and their backstories. “When I would act, I could just be whoever I wanted to be. I don’t know from where I would get that confidence and that freeness. No one is judging me and I can be whoever I want to be,” she begins. That realisation eventually made her decide that acting was what she wanted to pursue.
Years later, after moving through journalism, modelling, theatre and films, that instinct to keep discovering different lives has brought her to Batwara 1947. After her first audition and a subsequent meeting with director Rajkumar Santoshi, she learnt that there would be two more rounds of auditions. “After that, I never thought about whether I wanted to do it or not. I just wanted to see how I crack it,” she says.
When Rajkumar Santoshi called cut, she was still in character. “And then I saw everyone standing and clapping and Preity Zinta ma’am was standing and clapping. That was when I knew that I got the role. To see them stand and clap for you, that is a moment that I will never forget,” she recalls.
Stepping into the world of a story set in 1947 also required preparation. She and Karan Deol underwent dialect training to get the Punjabi of the period right. For Kanikka, however, the language had a personal familiarity because her grandparents had experienced Partition. The use of Punjabi was later reduced so that the film could speak to audiences across the country.
Experimentation has remained an important part of her journey. Having explored different platforms, genres and characters through projects including Tippu, Missing on a Weekend, Dono, Honeymoon and Murderbaad, she says she has never wanted to restrict herself to one kind of work. Her tryst with South Indian cinema began early, with Tippu, her first big project, being a Telugu film. Back then, she did not know the language and found the experience challenging, particularly because no one on set spoke Hindi. “After I did that film, I realised that maybe back then, I was really young. I realised that maybe, I was not ready for regional cinema and I should first try Hindi cinema. Once I understood how this works, then probably I can do something in a different language,” she says.
Today, however, she is open to exploring different languages. Among filmmakers from the South, there is one name she particularly admires: “Mani Ratnam sir. If I get a chance to work with him, I would love to.”
Hyderabad, meanwhile, holds memories from the early stages of her career. “Much of the filming for Tippu took place in the city while I was still in my first year of college. For five to six months, I would spend around 10 days every month in Hyderabad before returning to attend college,” she gleefully recalls.
Though the memories have become vague with time, she remembers loving Jubilee Hills and Hyderabad’s biryani. She also remembers being particularly fond of Mahesh Babu at the time, calling him ‘everyone’s crush’ and remembering that she found him very cute.
With Batwara 1947 opening up a new phase in her career, she says the change was already begun. “Probably the kind of scripts that I always wanted to do. At least I’m getting to read them now. So that’s a really big step for me and I think something good is happening now,” she concludes.