The brief given by her director was very simple - 'Look ugly'. However, it was nothing in need of a nightmare to really realise the filmmaker's vision.
"Dibakar wanted me to seem ugly and vulnerable. The very first thing that he did was chop my hair and make it really short. Then he gave me these clothes that were really grungy with jagged T-shirts and all. I wasn't allowed to seem very comfortable or feminine."
"The idea was to bring about certain vulnerability and awkwardness to my character. There isn't an oz of glamour that I usher in 'Shanghai'. Dibakar said that I needed to be ugly, but adorable. Now that was a wierd mix I needed to bring about screen," Kalki told in an interview.
Though she has played troubled characters in films like 'Shaitan', 'That Girl in Yellow Boots' in addition to 'Dev D', 'Shanghai' turned out to be a special experience as she needed to enact the a part of a whole outsider.
"Dibakar is presenting me as someone who's not an accepted person; she is an intruder. So basically everybody stares at her and people just think that she doesn't belong to their world," says Kalki.
Dibakar encourgaed the actress to switch her looks by giving the examples of Emraan Hashmi and Abhay Deol who've gone through an analogous transformation for his or her roles.
"Abhay is the sort of cool person in real life but this is shown as a stoic middle aged suited-booted character. Emraan has this paunch and blackened his teeth, that is a whole opposite of his romantic image. We were convinced by Dibakar's thought process and decided to take the plunge," she says.
Kalki says essentially the most difficult a part of this transformation was to peer her hair get chopped off. "AGAIN AND AGAIN people ask whether Dibakar brings actors out in their comfort zone. Well, here was my moment of having into that discomfort zone the minute my hair was cut. I WAS so depressed on waking up within the morning. I BELIEVED I gave the look of an entire idiot."
The self-pity helped her enact her lines in front of the camera well, says Kalki, who's fighting for justice within the movie. "'Shanghai' is a gritty dramatic affair with a conspiracy theory within the background.
There is a certain suspense to the story with the game of politics involved. I'M playing someone who desires to uncover the reality. Her journey is to move out and uncover the mystery behind this conspiracy," she says.
With a powerful plot like this, Kalki is confident that the film gets great response on the box office upon its release.
"Today, audience is set for such films. We now have already seen 'Kahaani', 'Paan Singh Tomar', 'Vicky Donor' and 'Ishaqzaade' doing good. 2012 is the year of small films and 'Shanghai' could be a welcome boost to that," she says. Also starring Farooq Sheikh, Prosenjit Chatterjee and Supriya Pathak in principal roles, 'Shanghai' releases on June 8.
