11 February,2026 01:23 PM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Bhumi Pednekkar
Bhumi Pednekkar has delivered some of the most versatile performances in her career. Be it gaining unreasonable weight for Dum Laga Ke Haisha or playing a shooter dadi in Saandh Ki Aankh. While most of us consider these as her finest performances, she thinks otherwise.
During her latest outing on Sit With Hitlist, she opened up about one of her most underrated films, Sonchiriya. She also opened up about her experience working with the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
Talking about her 2019 film, Bhumi shared, "We saw the kind of love that Sushant had. But clearly, that love did not translate to box office numbers at all when the movie came out."
Interestingly, Bhumi calls her role as Indumati Tomar in the film one of her finest performances. She reasons, "I'm so tough on myself as an actor that I don't enjoy anything that I do. But Sonchiriya was probably the only piece of work that I've really deeply enjoyed."
Recalling how she prepared for the role, she revealed that she trained for eight months, walking barefoot on the ground with five gharas of water on her head. She also recalled how the team helped her prepare for the role, saying, "There was a point when I was shooting Sonchiriya, and it was a very male-dominated set, and I was conditioned to feel lesser constantly for the character. And just not to feel safe, and to be like just alert all the time. It took me a very long time to get out of that character but probably one of my best experiences."
Further talking about her co-star, Sushant Singh Rajput, she shared, "Also I found a great friend in Sushant there. He was just special. He was unique in many ways. Extremely knowledgeable, very learned, very earnest towards his craft. I've seen the boy physically train himself for the film."
"He was just he was special in many ways, a great co-actor to work with. He gave me so much in every scene because most of my scenes were with him. He gave me so much fodder to feed off. You can do everything, but if you don't have a co-actor that respects you as an actor and who understands that, this probably is your moment in the scene, and you need to have it, and who's not insecure it's a blessing."
Talking about Sushant's journey, Bhumi says, "He was a pure merit-based actor. Started with television, mainstream television, then middle-of-the-road films and then mainstream films. You don't start at the top. You keep going up,p and he got all those opportunities."
