EXCLUSIVE: Vasudha Fame Priya Thakur Believes ‘Vulnerability Makes An Actor Strong’; Says, “Powerful Performances Come Only When You Stop Trying”

Vasudha's lead actress Priya Thakur gets candid about the one acting skill she learnt with time, actors' needing to be observants and lots more. Read on to know all she said.

Priya Thakur: Vulnerability Makes An Actor Stronger On Screen

For Priya Thakur, vulnerability is not something an actor should force. She believes it can actually make a performance stronger, especially during emotionally intense scenes. She said, “Yes, I actually believe that vulnerability makes an actor stronger on screen. For me, the most powerful performance comes only when you stop trying. You just connect with the emotions; you let yourself be vulnerable. I think it is important for an actor to understand what the demand is for the scene, what its concept is, rather than forcing yourself to cry and stuff like that.”

Priya explained that she does not enter a scene with a fixed idea about how she should react or deliver a particular dialogue. Instead, she prefers to stay in the moment and let the emotions guide her performance. She shared, “I stay in the moment, I feel the moment, and let myself perform. I don’t put bars that I have to do this, and it should look like this, I will do this, or I will cry on this line, and I will speak this dialogue in that way. It’s just when I perform, I let my senses open, and I just never decide what’s going to be there. I only read the scene, understand the scene and perform without imagining anything, and it’s all natural. So I think that is the vulnerability, and during intense scenes, I always prefer to keep that.”

Priya: Our Job Is To Listen To What The Other Person Is Saying

Interestingly, Priya Thakur feels one of the biggest lessons she has learnt with experience is something as simple as listening. When she started out, she admits that she was more worried about remembering her lines and thinking about her own performance. She said, “The thing which I developed with experience or time, I would say it’s listening. When I started, I never used to listen because I was more focused on my own lines or dialogues. Somewhere I was so stuck between lines and everything; I never used to listen to whatever people were saying. Sometimes my director was telling me something, and I was so out of my mind that I was totally into the lines: how will I perform, what if I forget my line? I never bothered about the concept and the depth of the scene.”

Priya now sees acting differently. According to her, simply delivering dialogues is not enough because an actor also needs to react to what the other person is saying. She shared, “Earlier, I thought it was the thing that you should never forget your lines, and that makes you a better actor. But with time, I realised that delivering lines is not our job. Our job is to listen to what the other person is saying, the person who is in front of you, because you are reacting to their dialogue. So you have to listen to them also. That’s what I have realised through time. That understanding has completely changed the way I approach my performance now.”

Priya Thakur: acting has made me a curious observer of people

Acting has also changed the way Priya looks at people in everyday life. She says she does not consciously study everyone around her, but often notices small details that can stay with her. She said, She explained, “Of course, acting has made me a curious observer of people. It’s not like that I observe people every time. But sometimes there are some little nuances that I remember in my head. I consciously watch. Actually, I don’t watch people’s behaviour cautiously, but sometimes I observe the mini details, like when people pause before speaking anything, the pause they take every time, the change in their voice when they are excited, happy or those little sparks in their eyes and things like that.”

Priya also pays attention to body language and the small reactions that people may not even realise they are showing. She said, “I observe the body language. I don’t study people cautiously, but these are the mini details, the little details that I observe and store in my mind so that maybe or may not I can use them in my profession. It doesn’t really mean that I will use those things, but sometimes, unknowingly, you do those kinds of things while you are performing. You suddenly remember that I can do this also because you have observed people; you know how people behave, so you can perform like that. Because I feel real-life observation has always become a stronger point for an actor, and it’s incredibly useful.”

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Grinell Jacinto

With nearly 10 years of experience, Grinell Esther Jacinto is the Desk Head of Bollywood Bubble. Her interests lie in everything that is kaleshi and she loves to dig deeper into the lives of B-town actors. She has a problem though – she loves horror films but will have chills the minute the theatres lights dims. She’s previously worked with Koimoi, UrbanAsian and SpotboyE.