Vidya Balan had apprehensions to 'say yes' to film 'Paa'

Amongst the many path-breaking characters that Vidya Balan has portrayed on screen, one of her most powerful roles was in ‘Paa’, where she played a largely single mother to 12-year-old Auro (Amitabh Bachchan), who suffers from progeria, a rare genetic condition that causes rapid, premature ageing.

In a recent interaction with a famed news portal, the Bollywood actor admitted that she had apprehensions about saying yes to the movie, co-starring Abhishek Bachchan as Auro’s father.

She said, “I took forever to say yes to that film because when Balki came to me, firstly I thought, ‘What kind of story is this? He’s mad’. And why would he come to me to play Amitabh Bachchan’s mother? That was the only script that I shared with a couple of my friends. Because once the initial shock had worn off, I realised that it’s a great script.”

Vidya Balan further went on to say that after the initial trepidation abated, she was all in.

“As an actor, I wanted to jump at it, but I wanted a few people to read it and tell me what they thought. And they all said, ‘My God, you must do this.’ But it took me a while to say yes. It wasn’t a calculated decision. But I was responding to my gut,” the actor added.

Apart from ‘Paa’, Vidya Balan’s other notable movies include ‘Kahaani’, ‘No One Killed Jessica’, ‘The Dirty Picture’ and ‘Jalsa’.