Ritika Singh made her debut in the role of a boxer alongside R Madhavan in Saala Khadoos (2016). A trained Mixed Martial Artist, Ritika bagged the role after the film’s makers discovered her during a fight. Since then, the actor has shared screen space with Vijay Sethupathi and Yogi Babu in the 2016 Tamil satirical film, Aandavan Kattalai, and was last seen in the Tamil romantic fantasy film, Oh My Kadavule (2020).
The actor is now leading a survivalist-thriller titled InCar. Ritika plays Sakshi in the film, a meek girl who gets abducted by a bunch of men in Haryana. The film details Sakshi’s mental and physical ordeal as she awaits her fate.
“I consider myself a strong woman and very resilient. Whenever a role is given to me, I think I am ready for it. But when the shooting for InCar started, I realised it was going to be tough. We shot for 35 days non-stop. More than the physical aspect, it was the mental, emotional churning. It was so draining it felt like torture. After some time the lines between reality and acting started to blur,” she shares.
Such roles can leave their imprint. For a long time after the shoot’s wrap, Ritika shares that—on some days—she didn’t feel like getting out of bed. “When I saw the trailer recently, there was this shot where the car reaches its destination. I am a very lively person in real life. But, in that shot, my eyes are drained of all life. Thankfully, now I have recovered and gotten out of that phase.”
InCar also feels urgent in its themes of women’s safety and crimes against them. Talking about feeling unsafe as a woman in the country she said, “I feel scared all the time. It is part of being a woman. I don’t think there is any woman who feels safe on the street at night. I am a Martial Artist, still I feel unsafe. My mind wanders in different directions and I start imagining how somebody will attack me and how I will defend myself. I, sometimes, am more scared because of all the awareness of an attacker’s psyche that I have,” she adds.
Directed by Harsh Warrdhan, the film will release in five different languages: Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam on March 3.