Shooting for the Dhruv’s 'Adithya Varma' was a memorable experience for Priya Anand. After all, this was the first time she was acting in a film with her pet dog, a five-year-old Shih Tzu named Bumblebee.
“It was unexpected! Vikram sir spotted him when I walked into the sets with Bumblebee. Something about him impressed them and they decided to have my dog in the film,” narrated Priya, who plays an actor in the 'Arjun Reddy' remake.
As Bumblebee wasn’t trained to ‘act’, Priya was a tad anxious. But he managed to surprise them all. “For a montage shot, Dhruv and I were in the scene with bodyguards behind me and Bumblebee on a table in front. In the scene, Dhruv says that he isn’t comfortable and would like privacy and so I ask the bodyguards to leave. To my surprise, Bumblebee also jumped off the table immediately, as though he understood the situation.”
Priya further recalls that though he wasn’t accustomed to being filmed, they never had to do any retakes because of him. “In fact, I feel Bumblebee is a better actor than me, because he did so much without any training! He gave us (Dhruv and herself) tough competition!” she quips.
However, that doesn’t mean there were no tense moments on sets for Priya, who was worried for another reason. “As it is, acting in Vikram sir’s presence made me nervous. Furthermore, there was another dog on sets. So I wondered how Bumblebee would react. But he was a natural so my fears were allayed.”
One of the reasons for things to go smoothly, Priya says, was Vikram and Dhruv’s love for pets. “They have a lot of dogs and are fond of animals. So they are very good with them. Dhruv even re-named him Bumble Varma,” she says.
The shoot made Bumblebee a star on social media as well. “Vikram sir took a photo of Bumblebee on the first day. By the end of the shoot, he had taken so many, that I started an Instagram page for Bumblebee with the photos he took.”