Hungry for more

WAMIQA GABBI has made inroads into Punjabi, South as well as Bollywood and is doing good work on OTT. TANISHA BHATTACHARYA chats with the multi-talented actress.

From starting her Bollywood journey with A-listers like Kareena Kapoor Khan and Shahid Kapoor in Imtiaz Ali's Jab We Met, to expanding her trajectory into Punjabi, Hindi, Malayalam, Telugu, and Tamil films, Wamiqa Gabbi has captured the eye of many talent hunters. Fast forward to the era of OTT and she has made a name for herself yet again with social drama Grahan and the bone-chilling thriller Mai. She was recently noticed in Kabir Khan's 83. Her latest collaboration is with ace filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj, who has directed her in one of the six stories in the Modern Love anthology, Mumbai Dragons. She is working with him in Khufiya, where she will share screen space with Ali Fazal and Tabu. Excerpts from an engaging interview with the actress.

It's been a long journey from Jab We Met to 83.

Whatever I did back then was a lot of fun. I didn't think I'd do all these things after Jab We Met.

All those aspirations came later. Before that, it was like, "Wow, I'm on a set!" It was so exciting for me to see Imtiaz Ali explaining the scenes to Kareena Kapoor or Shahid Kapoor. I was in 8th grade when I shot. I have been lucky, you know.

I was told many horror stories about women and men coming to Mumbai wanting to be actors and spending their whole lives here and not achieving anything. 83 was from the time in 2019 when I was almost convinced that this was not going to work out and that I should just do whatever came my way.

I was trying to go about my career in a planned manner. When 83 came, I was excited because it was directed by Kabir Khan. I had a small part, but it was just the story that we were trying to tell.

And that was something that I wanted to be a part of. I just said yes, but I didn't know that I was going to be noticed like that. And it's just been an overwhelming journey after that because Grahan happened, and it's been great thus far.