Maanvi Gagroo on Patralekhaa’s body-shaming

“It’s so ridiculous. It’s 2026, I can’t believe we’re still talking about it,” Maanvi Gagroo tells SCREEN in an exclusive interview. “I had a chat with Patra about it. I said, ‘Don’t even dignify it with a response. It doesn’t even need your attention. You’ve got so much going about it in your life. Don’t even give it any mental space,’” adds the actor.

Patralekhaa, however, couldn’t pay heed to her co-star’s advice beyond a point and lashed out at the paparazzi and trolls for their behaviour. “Of course, it’s easier for me to say because I wasn’t on the receiving end of it. And maybe she did feel the need to say it. She’s just had a baby, man! What do people want women to do? But they’re just opinions at the end of the day. They’re not facts,” says Maanvi.

Heer Sara’s uphill climb

Despite the film about being travel and female friendships, Heer Sara offers a new experience for Maanvi Gagroo as it’s her first theatrical release as a lead, where she’s sharing the load with another female actor, and not a male co-star like Sunny Singh in Ujda Chaman (2019) or Ayushmann Khurrana and Jitendra Kumar in Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020). It’s also her first theatrical release in over six years, so some pressure is bound to be felt in the week of release.

“I don’t know about the pressure part actually because I haven’t thought about it. Because in a way, I’ve never had that. It’s exciting, so let’s see how it goes. People who watch the film are definitely going to like it. Now, it’s about getting people to watch it. Eventually, that’s what it boils down to with every film,” says Maanvi.

The visual of Patralekhaa and Maanvi Gagroo riding a bike across Puducherry may remind many of Tarun Dudeja’s 2023 road movie Dhak Dhak. In the film backed by Taapsee Pannu’s Outsider Films Productions, four women (Ratna Pathak Shah, Dia Mirza, Fatima Sana Shaikh, and Sanjana Sanghi) ride bikes all the way to Leh, Ladakh. Like the challenging journey in the movie, Taapsee admitted that the path to secure a release for the movie wasn’t easy either, whether in theatres or on OTT. Heer Sara director Kartik Chaudhry had a similar experience with getting his film out.

“It’s almost like climbing Mount Everest, not just an uphill climb,” says Kartik, adding, “We’ve shown it to platforms and trying to do a direct-to-OTT release due to the market situation. But somehow, it was very, very difficult. We had theatrical in mind, so we eventually took the decision to release it ourselves. It’s very difficult for films like this to come out. Finally, now, we’ve reached the tip of Mount Everest.”

A woman on the road

Another challenge while writing and shooting Heer Sara was to crack how differently a woman would hit the road, as opposed to a man like Kartik Chaudhry. “As a filmmaker, I’m quite dependent on my actors. But particularly for this film, two boys had written it. I was very careful about it, so we got a third writer, Smriti Bhoker, on board. My brief to her was simple: ‘Yes, we have our mothers, sisters, and partners in our lives, and we try and empathise with them as much as possible, but still there’s no way we can be 100% true to what being a female is.’ And then she actually added so much to the script, including even the names of the characters,” recalls Kartik.

He sought inputs of not only the female co-writer, but also the two leading ladies of Heer Sara. “Eventually, they became the drivers, and I became the pillion. Doing a road trip as a woman would be completely different. I clearly remember Maanvi told me they carry in their bag the spray you use on the toilet seat when you use a public washroom. That’s something I wouldn’t have thought of. So, I was very dependent and open to them adding their perspectives, until and unless they don’t change the core of the characters and the script,” says Kartik.

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Maanvi Gagroo lauds Kartik Chaudhry for being very receptive to her and Patralekhaa’s inputs on set. “Even before we went on floors, he asked us if there’s any insight we’d like to add that they’ve missed, especially regarding women travelling. We went to him with very stupid and random suggestions also, but he was very open about it,” says Maanvi. Having just finished a female-fronted show like Four More Shots Please!, Maanvi adds that she wishes more men like Kartik show up on film sets to make the journey of women like her far smoother and more lived-in.