Raai Laxmi's Cinderella gown weighed 25 kg

Raai Laxmi’s upcoming horror fantasy Cinderella has been in the news for its interesting premise and posters. However, when the film’s director Vinod Venkatesh initially offered her the role, she wasn’t sure whether she could pull it off.

“I have three different shades — the title role Cinderella, a rock star, and a young domestic help. I wasn’t sure if I could get into the role of maid and subsequently transform into the other roles. But again, that’s what pushed me to take up the character,” says Raai Laxmi.

While Cinderella is a familiar fairy tale character, she says that the film will unveil the other side of Cinderella. “From fairy tale to scary tale,” she quips, adding that the fictional story has several subplots within it.

“I play a young girl who imagines being like Cinderella; how her life takes different turns has been chronicled grippingly,” she says about the story.
Pulling off three different characters took a toll on the actress physically and psychologically too. She had to do a lot of work to prepare for her part. To make the characters look believable, the director and the actress decided to first get the looks right and they hired prosthetic makeup artists to help.  Costume trials were another major challenge.

“The director wanted a funky hairstyle for the Cinderella character, for which I had to colour my hair multiple times,” she reveals. But as a result, her continuity scenes in other films was affected.

“My hair was damaged too because it was a difficult colour to achieve as the director wanted it to be unique,” she shares. The signature Cinderella gown (with an antique touch) she wore weighed around 25 kgs. It was a custom-made gown designed by Jerry D'Souza. It had many layers, textures and shades and an umbrella shape, and was one of the most expensive outfits.

“I had to perform a few action sequences wearing the gown. I couldn’t sit while wearing it, so I would stand for hours, and I ended up hurting my lower back,” the actress reveals. Raai Laxmi recently did a Hindi dance number, Current, sung by Payal Dev, featuring actor-singer Pawan Singh. The actress says she loves music and is glad that the trend of singles is being revived.

“Earlier we used to think twice before doing a special song or a single, but now times are changing. Audiences are welcoming different content and music,’ she explains, adding that she shot the song in two days in Jaipur. “Also, the music video is an untouched area for me, so I gave it a shot and I enjoyed it,” she signs off.