Deepika Padukone: I Was So Helpless

Deepika Padukone - You Can Do It

Deepika Padukone gives an interview and speaks about the pressure she felt when she was performing on the set of a movie with Shahrukh Khan.

Transcript: I couldn’t understand what was going on, and I was about to break down. We started shooting, and there was this really awkward energy that I could feel. I could feel murmuring and whispering, and everyone’s making ... Trying to make eye contact without me seeing, and I’m really perceptive to these things, so I was like, “what is going on”. I couldn’t understand what was going on, and luckily I had Shahrukh, and I was like, “Can someone tell me?” So then they kind of slowly sort of said that, you know, the accent is not working, and the humor is not coming through, it’s falling flat. And this was my first day on this film, and I just wanted to ... I didn’t know what to do. I was just so helpless. I went home, and I came back the next day, and nobody said anything, and I got ready again, and it was the same and same everything ... Everything was the same, and people started clapping. Clearly, something had happened overnight.

So things will always not go your way, there will be times where things will be difficult, there’ll be times where you wanted things to be a certain way and they don’t go that way. But I think through the years, I think the one thing that I’ve learned is to be patient, and to really believe in yourself. I mean, you can have amazing people around you telling you different things. Some people really believe in your vision, and some people won’t. Some people will also discourage you and say, “you know what, are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you want to wait? Why don’t you try something else or do something else?” I think it’s important to be ... I mean, at least I, fortunately had a lot of clarity about what I wanted to do with my life, and for myself, and I’ve been very patient through all of it, and I’m not someone ... I don’t give up easily.

The minute you tell me that I can’t do something, I work that much harder to prove ... Not to people, but to myself ... That I can do it. It can be anything.