Bipasha Basu Singh Grover on 20 years of Raaz: I got a pivotal role when heroines played only love interest

While Raaz was a turning point for Bipasha Basu Singh Grover, the actor wasn’t the first choice for the role of Sanjana, her character in the horror film.

“It was being shot with Lisa Ray and Dino Morea. I had actually gone for the first day of shoot, as Dino was my boyfriend then. It so happened that Lisa couldn’t do the film for whatever reasons, and Mukesh (Bhatt, co producer) requested me to play the role. Earlier I had been approached for Malini’s character which I had refused. It’s strange, I guess that role was meant for me,” says the actor as she looks back the film that released two decades ago.

Basu was just a film old when she decided to say a yes to Raaz. She says it helped her decide she wanted to pursue acting, which was never her long term plan.

The actor continues, “The success of Raaz is why I decided acting is fun and this is the profession I want to be a part of. It also made me realise I have true potential as an actor. I was very young at that point to portray the role of a woman so deeply in love, like a modern day Savitri. That depth I had not experienced in life also. It was a horror film, yes, but the drama is what attracted me, a lady who gest cheated by her lover, yet goes to any length to protect him.” She asserts that she got such a pivotal role at a time when “heroines were only playing love interest”.

The music too remains popular to date. Such is the craze for the songs, Basu reveals, that even today she can hear them playing whenever she visits any hill station. “When Raaz released, whenever I would stop at any traffic signal, people would sing the songs for me all the time. It went on for years. I became a household name, Raaz gave me a lot. Right now we talk about business, just first Friday,Saturday and Sunday. In 2002, there were not even anymultiplexes. Raaz had a golden jubilee run, that doesn’t happen anymore,” she says.