From the beginning, director Shakun Batra knew that Gehraiyaan, which deals with infidelity and interpersonal dynamics, would have more than its fair share of intimate scenes. So, roping in India-based Ukrainian filmmaker Dar Gai as an intimacy director felt like the right move. Even in the post #MeToo world, it’s rare for Hindi films to have intimacy directors on board, but Batra’s top priority while filming the relationship drama was to make his actors feel safe and comfortable. 

Gai joined actors Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday and Dhairya Karwa well before the camera rolled on the Amazon Prime Video offering. What followed were weeks of workshops and trust-building exercises. “Intimacy directors facilitate any interaction, between actors, involving touch and/or emotional sexual tension. You need to work on different factors such as [their] psychology. As an intimacy director, you need to understand what it is to be an actor, [and accordingly decide the] exercises that you can use to take them in that zone,” she explains.