The Arjun Reddy girl, who earned heaps of praise for her South blockbuster, has an interesting story to tell about how she happened to sign the YRF movie — Jayeshbhai Jordaar.
Shalini Pandey’s Bollywood story is stuff that dreams are made of and it just enforces the belief that anything is possible in the world of cinema. She reveals, “It was sheer luck that I got noticed and I can’t thank the universe enough. I was at a restaurant one day with a friend of mine and there was Shanoo (YRF’s casting director) sitting with a bunch of people. There was only one place available for two which was right beside Shanoo’s! We felt a little odd because it seemed like they were discussing some important stuff, so we sat at a different table and had our meal. That’s it. We didn’t interact at all.”
The actress adds, “The same situation repeated itself I guess one or two days later. I happened to go to another bistro and I saw her there again. Again, I got to sit just next to her because there wasn’t any table available and again we didn’t interact! One fine day, I was on my Instagram and just going through my messages. Her message was there in ‘other’ messages inbox. I really got excited and I tried to open the message. So, nowadays you have this Instagram feature ‘Allow or Deny’ and I don’t know how or what I did but her message got deleted! So, for the longest time, I was thinking that did I hallucinate or did her message actually come for me!”
The young actress further reveals, “I was in a state of flux over the next 5-6 days thinking whether to contact her or not but then, thankfully, I got a call from her team saying that they wanted to audition me for a film! I had no idea about which film it was for but I was thrilled, relieved and excited and I went for the audition and the rest is history!”
What Shalini got to know later is that she made it just in the nick of time. Producer of Jayeshbhai Jordaar, Maneesh Sharma says, “Casting for Jayeshbhai’s heroine was a long process. It involved to have a perfect fit of a nuanced actor with a great screen presence and to be paired with Ranveer. Shalini was nowhere in the picture for the film. It was a stroke of luck that we found her. In fact, we had actually shortlisted about three girls and their rounds of workshops had already started with Divyang. It was at this point that I told Shanoo, that we should not stop scouting for the girl.”
Maneesh adds, “Shanoo introduced us to Shalini and she floored us all with her auditions. She is an amazing performer and Divyang and I were thrilled to have found the girl we were looking for. She is the surprise package of our film and we are certain that audiences will give her all the love that she truly deserves for her hardwork and acting skills.”
