New Delhi. Actress Patralekhaa says she was initially hesitant to shoot a music video with Rajkummar Rao as she found him “intimidating” after seeing his performance in Dibakar Banerjee’s film “Love Sex Aur Dhokha” (LSD).
Patralekha dated actor Rao for over 10 years before marrying him in November 2021.
Actress Patralekha is being praised for her performance in Anubhav Sinha’s series “IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack”. She spoke about her first meeting with Rao during an interview with “Woman of Bombay”.
She said, “I had just seen his first film ‘LSD’. Two-three days later, a school friend of mine, who was studying in FTII, called me and said, ‘Can you make this video for me. It’s a music video and I am calling another actor called Rajkumar. He had just worked in LSD’.” “I said, ‘Rukhsana, no, I am not coming because I think he is very scary and I was scared,” Patralekhaa said, recalling the role of the creepy lover played by Rajkummar in the 2010 Dibakar Banerjee-directed film. Patralekhaa said her friend assured her that nothing would happen to her. She suggested that she could also bring her sister Parna along to the shoot.
Patralekhaa said, “I said, ‘Okay, let’s see.’ I made my sister sit between me and Raj and they started chatting. I was feeling awkward because he was the scary guy in that movie. So, I pinched my sister and told her not to talk to him.” She added, “And eventually, it was a little awkward because the journey from Mumbai to Pune was also long.” According to Patralekhaa, when Rao asked about her work, she told him about the advertisement she did for Tata Docomo and other advertisements.
She said, “And as soon as I said that, I saw something change. And as the story progressed, he saw that ad and he was like, ‘I want to marry this girl.'” Patralekhaa said that she spent three days with Rao for the music video and her perception about him changed.
Patralekhaa said, “He was a different person, someone who loves his art so much and is so passionate about his work. It was very rare, and I couldn’t stop myself from falling in love with him.” She added, “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this man is so passionate about his work and he has so much honesty and depth.’ At that time, when I was going through auditions, everyone was doing it to either become rich or famous, or get a lot of cars. But he was someone who was doing it for the love of his art.” After the music video, Patralekhaa and Rao worked together in Hansal Mehta’s 2014 film “Citylights” and the web series “Bose: Dead/Alive”.