Priyasha Bharadwaj, played the role of Soundarya, Sushmita sen’s younger sister in the web series Aarya which is cuurently streaming in DisneyPlusHotstar was born and brought up in Guwahati.
Aarya is an Indian crime drama web television series co-created by Ram Madhvani and Sandeep Modi based on the Dutch drama series Penoza by Pieter Bart Korthuis for Hotstar’s label Hotstar Specials starring Sushmita Sen in the titular role. The show is produced by Endemol Shine India and Madhavani’s Ram Madhavani Films. The series is co-directed by Ram Madhvani , Sandeep Modi and Vinod Rawat which was released on 19 June 2020. It is also the comeback of Sushmita Sen after almost a decade.
In an interview with the one of the media portal, Priyasha talked about her childhood and her life before acting.
Born and brought up in Guwahati, Priyasha Bhardwaj has made it to the city of dreams, Mumbai through her stellar performance in Aarya.
Priyasha started schooling at St. Mary’s Guwahati and her latter half of schooling was done in Sanskriti School, Delhi. She did her graduation in Psychology from Delhi University and is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer. She has also learnt Jazz and other Western dance forms at Ashley Lobo’s The Danceworx.
Although, Priyasha hails from a family of a theatre icon of Assam, the Late Satya Prasad Baruah (A Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee), the film industry was never her dream profession while growing up. But she was always into dance, music and later theatre.
While speaking to the media portal, Priyasha said, “Pursuing dance as a hobby slowly nudged me in the direction of performing arts. And later, theatre helped m honing the craft of acting.”
“Back in college, I got my first modelling assignment with Dove and featured in the Dove-Femina colab calendar campaign “Beautiful hair and Beautiful You” in 2009. It still gives me immense happiness to remember those days as I thoroughly enjoyed my first ever shoot and people really liked my face. And to my surprise the photos were in hoardings in Delhi and NCR,” she added.
Priyasha began her journey with several commercials, and it was through these assignments that she managed to audition for the character of Soundarya for the web series ‘Aarya’. Some of her other projects also include Amazon Prime Video’s Made in Heaven and Zee-5’s Kaafir starring Dia Mirza.
Priyasha did her first TV commercial for Britannia Good Day with Deepika Padukone,
When asked about how she got the project ‘Aarya’, the actress said, “Basically I started from scratch, from auditioning for ads and small roles made me what I am today. I still remember auditioning for Aarya. Casting Director Abhimanyu Ray, with whom I have already done a lot of projects was the one who helped me audition for Aarya. A few days later, I received a message from him that I got the part of Soundarya. And this is how Aarya landed to me.”
On being asked about her experience of working with Sushmita Sen, she replied, “To be honest I was awestruck by Sushmita Sen since my childhood. I had grown up admiring her. I myself wanted to become just like her. She has been an inspiration for me. When I was young, I would try to look and act like her. In fact in my head I was Sushmita Sen. My first-ever professionally choreographed song was ‘Chunari Chunari’. I remember teaching a group of ladies on this particular song. And yes, I enjoyed that, too. But the universe had some different plans for me and finally I got a chance to meet and know her as a person, and what a gem of a person she is. She is a wonderful human being and a delightfully generous co-actor. She was always there, and yes, she is definitely a good listener. I am very lucky to have got this chance of working with her and am definitely waiting eagerly to work with her all again.”
While talking about her experience as Soundarya, she said, “The character of Soundarya has definitely evolved me as an actor and has made me more professional. The character has taught me a lot in terms of technical film acting. I was one of the youngest and the newest on the set. Even the child actors had been working for longer than I had. So honestly, it wasn’t that difficult. The moment I walked on the set, I was Soundarya, younger sister of Aarya, married to Bob Wilson. The best part about this shooting format was we were always in character.”
Later this year, she will be seen in a completely different character in Amazon Prime’s Mirzapur 2.
Priyasha quotes, “The character I am playing in Mirzapur 2 is a quite raw and more desi in comparison to the character of Soundarya. Though Aarya and Mirzapur 2 both are crime thrillers but are way different from each other. And I have transformed myself into a character I have never played before for the series.”
Lastly, when she was asked where she sees herself in the next 5 years, Priyasha replied, “I want to continue acting and want to portray different kinds of characters and evolve myself as a better actor. I also want to work with a lot of directors whom I have grown up admiring such as Vishal Bharadwaj, Sanjay Leela Bansali, Meera Nair, zoya Akhtar, to name a few. And most importantly, I want to make my mother proud of me and I hope she is proud of me as people have loved me for the role of Soundarya.”
The web series Aarya begins with Soundarya’s royal Rajasthani wedding and end with her tragic fate-both causing irreparable damages to Aarya’s life.
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