Advait Chandan opens up on working with Zaira Wasim

Working with children can prove to be quite a task but director Advait Chandan managed to make a film which had a child as the protagonist and the audience fell in love with it. In his film 'Secret Superstar' he worked with Zaira Wasim who played the role of Insiya and Tirth Sharma and Kabir Sajid, who played Chintan and Guddu, respectively. However, the director doesn't think that working with children is stressful. “The children brought in a great energy to the crew. There’s a schedule, you are losing light, you have to finish a certain number of shots, but the minute there’s a child on sets, everyone becomes happy,” he said.

On working with Zaira, he said, “I have literally watched her grow in front of me. At this age, she has grown so fast from how she was in 'Dangal'. She is so confident, so skilled. I feel really proud to see her go through this journey. She is an amazing person to work with,” he said. “She is very involved in her craft. She isn’t someone who will get carried away with all the attention that she gets,” he added.

Talking about having difficult days, he said, "Even I have my share of good days and bad days. It happens to everyone. The main thing is that you have to treat them like an equal. If someone is having a bad day, you have to respect that and ask them whether they want to or don’t want to do a certain scene.” He further added, “I remember, Zaira was very nervous to do the scene where she has a breakdown on the terrace. I told her that I too am feeling very nervous. It was genuine. I really was nervous because it was a tricky scene to shoot. We supported each other because we were both having a scary day.”

On effectively managing the work environment, he said, “We were careful about things like how we behave and talk. Things like raising our voice. So, that it becomes a happy environment to work around them. At times, we were shooting in a school, so there were these two (Zaira and Chintan) and other 14-year-olds, too. So, we always were in that kind of an environment where we had to keep it right for the kids.” Advait further spoke about how working on 'Taare Zameen Par' helped him. “I remembered how careful Aamir sir was with all those kids. He was very gentle with all the kids who worked in the film. I think that was the quality that I tried to bring to the sets on this project too,” he concluded.

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Credits: DNA