Back to You

Keep it Professional

As if she can feel my eyes on her, she turns to look over at me. I quickly look down at my script before she can tell I was looking at her. I need to get a grip over myself. We're moving on but that doesn't mean the relationship between us can change. We are over and just because we have to maintain a cordial relationship for work, doesn't change anything. I keep repeating that to myself to drill it in my head. I can't let my brain go down the route. It's a dangerous temptation that will only have a bad ending.

They call me up to shoot and we're shooting one of the first confrontation scenes between our characters. This is a scene where the female lead, Maya, finds out that the male lead, Abhir, is the one trying to sabotage her family business. They had met a couple of times before this and knew of each other but this is their first conversation.

The director yells out, "Action."

Teja comes into the scene and sees me standing at the party on my phone.

"Abhir Mehra, who the fuck do you think you are?"

I give her a cursory glance before looking back down on my phone and finishing my faux text message. After a couple of seconds, I look back up and say "Darling I think you answered that question yourself."

She walks until she's barely a foot away from me. "I know exactly what you are up to. How dare you?"

I stop leaning against the wall and take a step toward her and she takes a step back. As I take a step toward her, I say "How dare I what? Have conversations with your suppliers? Talk to some of your clients? None of this is illegal babe. It's just business."

Before Teja can say her next line, the director shouts "Cut. Teja you're on equal footing with him. You have to show you're not scared of him."

We run this scene twice more and each time the director makes us reshoot saying that Teja isn't embodying the character correctly. I can tell she's getting frustrated so before the next scene starts I decide to try and help.

Before she goes to the side of the set, I grab her wrist but quickly let go when she turns around. "Teja next time I take a step near you, don't step back. Hold your ground and it'll show that you don't back down. It'll annoy my character that you're just as headstrong and I can't intimidate you."

She gives me a slight nod and says, "Uh thanks. I'll try that this time."

We get to that part of the scene and she does as I advised. We run through our dialogues with our faces inches away from her and I'm so captivated by her. My final dialogue for the scene comes up and I say "Maya Shah I can't wait to kill that spirit along with your business." While saying that dialogue I can't help myself from pinching her cheek, which causes her eyes to widen in surprise. I walk to the side of the set and the director yells out "Cut! Karan Teja that was great. The chemistry between you two is perfect and your improvisations felt so natural. Let's reshoot a few more times to make sure we have all the angles we need."

Before I take my position on set, Teja walks up to me. "Thank you by the way. I was scared of how we would act together, but now I know we'll be fine."

I give her a small smile. "I'm going to hold you to that promise you made in the car that you'd be the best co-star I've ever had."

She laughs and while walking to her spot on set she says "I will be. You'll see."

We finish shooting for the day and I guess that first scene broke the barrier between us acting-wise. The directors were happy with the way we executed each scene and loved our individual as well as duo performance. We got comfortable with each other to the point that we were able to get close or touch each other without those moments of awkwardness. However, as soon as the camera stopped rolling that distance would return and we'd spring apart. That was fine though. We just needed to perform well together as co-stars. How our relationship was otherwise couldn't matter.