Sidharth Malhotra and Parineeti Chopra - Bright Media Pakistan

Sidharth Malhotra and Parineeti Chopra were immensely loved in their first film with each other, Hasee Toh Phasee. Their chemistry had become the talk of the town. Once again, the duo will be seen together on the 70 mm in their upcoming film, Jabariya Jodi, which is based on groom kidnapping. mid-day.com got exclusively in touch with Sidharth and Parineeti to know what all preparations they had to undergo to get into the skin of their characters. When asked Sidharth Malhotra about it, who had to get the nuances and accent right for his character Abhay Singh, he said, "A lot of training whether it was to get the accent right, or working on the mannerisms, getting the body language right, styling for all of us. Because, I think, at least for me, I was portraying something that I haven't in the past - a very heartland character. He's still very strong but also very colourful, which lends itself to a lot of humour, which is new to me. About two months of rigorous training and prepping was that went into it and we had specialists on set as well who were helping us and guiding us." As seen in the trailer, Sidharth kidnaps grooms and gets them forcefully married. Were Parineeti and Sidharth aware of this phenomenon to be existing in society? To which, Sidharth said that he must have just read one article about it somewhere. "I did not know about this issue before. I must have read one particular article or something but when you go into the depth of it, there are so many things interlinked, whether it is dowry or 'pakadva vivaah' (groom kidnapping) to stop dowry or people thinking that once you are married why to get a divorce, that's also an issue there. It deals with so many things that exist in our society. But, that being said, this is a film not only about that, but it is also a love story in an entertaining and energetic premise of Patna. It's got a mix of everything for me. I am very excited for people to watch this film." Parineeti Chopra plays the character of Babli Singh and when mid-day.com asked her about groom kidnapping. Does she know what it means and is she aware of it? To which she said, "No. Very loosely through newspaper articles but we clearly didn't have enough knowledge. But when I read about it, it's such a serious and rampant issue in UP and Bihar, I actually thought that we are going to make some informative, intense film on it but it turned out to be an extremely entertaining script. I was also very excited that this was a good combination of telling people about a serious issue and yet make them laugh. That's the reason I picked up this film. Even while we were shooting, I was really happy that we were making a film like this." Since the duo reunited after five years, Sidharth also spoke about facing the cameras. Did their equation change? "It's tough to describe, we picked it up from where we left off. There's a bond and a friendship that we had in Hasee Toh Phasee and it follows on till this film. Even in the middle, we hadn't lost touch, something or the other, we were interacting. I think it really helps a love story. It helps to have a co-actor you are friendly with and to playing romantic scenes - dancing or improvising. It has been great and we are looking forward to our people who loved Hasee Toh Phasee to watch Jabariya Jodi and maybe get more people to like our pairing," concluded Sidharth Malhotra. Helmed by a debutant director, Jabariya Jodi is slated to release on August 9, 2019.