Masaba Gupta: I had bad cramps because of the tight corset

A week before her January 2023 wedding, fashion designer and actor Masaba Gupta got a call. It wasn’t the expected congratulatory call; instead, it was casting director Panchami Ghavri requesting her to front a dance number in Kesari Chapter 2. “I thought it was a bizarre request to come my way,” recalls Gupta, whose cabaret song, Khumaari, is a surprise element in the Akshay Kumar-led period drama.

Not many know that in her teenage years, Gupta trained at Shiamak Davar’s institute, and has always been enthusiastic about dancing. Tell her it shows in the song, and she attributes it to director Karan Singh Tyagi’s vision. “He had this thought [of casting me]. It was earlier meant to be a burlesque number, and then, it became a cabaret song. The fact that I knew I could do justice to it made me say yes. I’ve been a dancer all my life, and always wanted to do something like this. My gut feeling was that I should do it because it was a Dharma film, set in the right backdrop, and it could be something that I could lend myself to,” she says. 

Before the shoot, Gupta rehearsed for two-three days with choreographer Vijay Ganguly. She even had a reference in her head. “I was referencing Catherine Zeta-Jones from her performance in [Chicago]. 

In my head, it was a toned-down performance of Zeta-Jones’ in All that jazz,” she smiles, adding that while the dance was a breeze, she faced an unexpected hurdle. “I had bad cramps because of the tight corset, and was curled up in the vanity van between takes. But it sorted itself out thankfully, and everyone was patient with me.”