Sonam Kapoor On Why It's Important For Women To Speak Up

The actor opens up about being a ‘girls’ girl’, why being born into Bollywood is more than just a privilege, and what she thinks of the #Metoo movement.

- Nandini Bhalla

It’s the morning of the Cosmo cover shoot, and Sonam Kapoor’s manager calls to inform us that she will be arriving an hour earlier than scheduled. Sonam’s been feeling a little under the weather, she explains, and would really like to wrap up by lunchtime.

She ends up arriving even sooner than anticipated, and the crew scrambles to get things in order. Noone really minds though, because Sonam is all smiles and hugs and rapid chatter. All three, it should be noted, are Sonam’s ‘things’—qualities that make her impossible not to warm up to.

Ill or not, she seems palpably happy (“It’s just a tummy bug,” she tells me, “but it can pull you down, you know!”).

I point out how she looks visibly contented, and she responds with a grin. “Oh, but I’m always happy! I’m just a happy, chirpy, optimistic person. And even when I do get annoyed, it doesn’t last long... Isn’t that true, Nam?” she asks her long-standing make-up artist and good friend, Namrata Soni, who is coaxing Sonam’s poker-straight hair into gentle waves.

‘Nam’ nods in agreement, and Sonam continues, “A lot of things are happening right now, you know? A lot of good things.”

By ‘good things’, she is referring to a slew of ‘Sonam films’ releasing this year. There’s Veere Di Wedding, Sanju, and Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga. And that’s not counting the still-in-cinemas social drama, Pad Man, which released soon after our chat.