"Wearing bikini in Bewakoofiyan was my idea, not Aditya Chopra's," says saucy Sonam Kapoor

You’d think that Sonam Kapoor is only carrying forward the illustrious Yash Raj legacy by getting into a bikini for Bewakoofiyan. After all, we’ve seen any number of Yashraj heroines from the old Sonam in Vijayv(1983) to today’s Sonam Kapoor in Bewakoofiyan don the bikini. But Sonam springs a saucy surprise by saying the bikini was her idea. “It wasn’t the producer Aditya Chopra or the director Nupur Asthana’s idea that I wear a bikini. In fact the director suggested a one-piece bathing costume. But I thought a bikini was fine. If you see the trailer there are two young people going for swim. It’s perfectly natural for the girl to be in a bikini. It’s not Halle Berry in a James Bond film or Bipasha Basu in Dhoom making a splash. The bikini blends naturally into the scene. And I am very happy to be wearing one. Having a female director around helped. But I wasn’t really tense about wearing a bikini.” Sonam’s father Anil Kapoor has apparently said that Sonam’s bikini shot would get Bewakoofiyan a good opening. Sonam completely refutes any such statement from her father. “My father never said that. All that I said at a press meet was that my father feels the film would get a good opening. That statement found itself bonding with the bikini in the newspaper headlines. I’ve realized I have to be very careful in what I say. I speak my heart out. Such honesty is not appreciated in the film industry. Instead it is twisted and distorted. A lot of what I say is lost in translation.” Sonam is very happy to have done a frothy feel-happy film like Bewakoofiyan. “Finally! I’ve been doing too many intense films from Saawariya, Delhi 6, Mausam and last year there was Raanjhanaa and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. After doing Bewakoofiyan I realized I hadn’t done any conventional films at all.” Bewakoofiyan helped Sonam to relax. “I needed to unwind, just have fun doing a role. Also, some of my films have taken longer to be completed than usual. This one took only 40 days to shoot. It wasn’t a marathon race but more like a quick run. It was chicken soup for my soul. It was a very easy smooth slip-in-slip-out kind of shoot. I never realized when we started the shooting and when it ended.” The other factor that Sonam found relaxing in Bewakoofiyan was the rom-com format. “I had two heroine-centric films Khubsoorat and Dolly Ki Doli lined up. Before I went into these films where I had to shoulder the film’s weight, I needed to do something where both the leads had equal responsibility to share. Bewakoofiyan was liberating.” The film’s sensibility is very close to Sonam’s personality. “Bewakoofiyan is a frothy American rom-com kind of film about urban kids. Since both Ayushmann and I are urban youngsters it was relatively easy for us to identify with the situations in the script.” Remind her that Ayushmann is from Chandigarh which is not that urbanized a background and Sonam protests, “Oh, you’ll be surprised at how urban Chandigarh has become. I’ve shot there recently. Believe me, it is no longer a small town. And besides Ayushmann has spent most of his life in Delhi. So his sensibilities are very urban. I had great fun shooting with him.”