NEW DELHI: Lara Dutta who underwent a major transformation for the espionage thriller Bell Bottom, said that her husband Mahesh Bhupathi was ‘shocked’ to see her look. She plays former prime minister Indira Gandhi in the film, which also stars Akshay Kumar, Vaani Kapoor and Huma Qureshi. To look the part, Lara went through an arduous make-up and prosthetic process. She looked unrecognisable in the trailer of Bell Bottom. In an interview with Zoom, Lara opened up about Mahesh’s reaction to her Indira Gandhi look. “My husband was shocked. He probably felt very unsettled with the look. He was like I don’t want to hug you. You don’t really look like yourself.”
Lara also revealed how her daughter Saira reacted. “She was intrigued. She saw it come alive in front of her… She came in and she saw whole silicon on my face and said, ‘Mum they are going to kill you, you can’t breathe.’ She was so worried. Ya, but having said that, she was also very intrigued and was like, ‘Can I touch the nose, the eyebrows? Can I do this, that?’” Bell Bottom, directed by Ranjit M Tewari, is set in the 1980s. Akshay stars as an undercover agent tasked with rescuing 210 hostages from a hijacked plane. Lara said that she spent three hours in the make-up chair every day, as it was important to get the look right. “The idea was to capture everything correctly and make sure we are as close to the resemblance of Mrs Gandhi as possible. At the end of the day, either I play Indira Gandhi as Lara Dutta or we make Lara Dutta a close resemblance to Indira Gandhi,” she said. Bell Bottom, produced by Vashu Bhagnani, Jackky Bhagnani, Deepshikha Deshmukh, Monisha Advani, Madhu Bhojwani and Nikkhil Advani, is set for a theatrical release on 19 August.