Ananya Panday on 'Call Me Bae': A Blend of All the Chick-Flicks I Loved Growing Up

Actor Ananya Panday says her new OTT series "Call Me Bae" is inspired by the funny women-centric movie

Ananya Panday on 'Call Me Bae': Actor Ananya Panday says her new OTT series "Call Me Bae" is inspired by the funny women-centric movies she grew up watching, like "Clueless" and "Aisha". In the new Prime Video show she plays Bae aka Bella Chowdhary who goes from riches to rags.

At the trailer launch of the show, Ananya mentioned that her character was inspired by Kareena Kapoor Khan’s character Pooja Sharma aka Poo from the 2001 film "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..." produced by Karan Johar who also produced "Call Me Bae" through Dharmatic Entertainment.

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"It's an amalgamation of all these chick-flick kind of movies that I loved growing up. And then there was obviously Poo, who was iconic. I literally dressed up as Poo two years ago... I have all her quotes on my mirror and everything, so she's really left an imprint on me.”

"It's like a mix of 'Schitt's Creek', 'Clueless', 'Aisha', 'Nancy Drew'... I don't think we're really getting to watch right now. It's the kind of show that I love to watch. It's very light, young adult, happy and fun. Even though Bae has a bit of all these characters, she is fully her own person," the actor told reporters.

"Call Me Bae", directed by Collin D'Cunha and created by Ishita Moitra, is about Bae living a life of luxury in New Delhi, till she gets disowned by her family. She then moves to Mumbai, becomes a journalist to support herself and in the process forms unexpected friendships, alliances and faces many obstacles thrown at her.

Panday, who has also been seen in "Student of the Year 2", "Gehraiyaan" and "Dream Girl 2" says Bae was the most fun yet toughest role of her career.

"It's the first time that I'm doing a long-format series, and the advantage of that is that you get to go into every character. With films, you only have a couple of scenes. You can't really build up a backstory that much. But with a long format, you get to do that," she said, praising Johar and D'Cunha as well as the show's team for helping her out during the shooting.

"Everything that I've done in the show is thanks to them. The crew, the dialogues, the way it is written. It was just so much fun," she added.

The trailer releases today and ends with a conversation between Bae and a security guard which is a nod to Panday's famous interview with her "Gehraiyaan" co-star Siddhant Chaturvedi during a roundtable interview a few years ago where he talked about being an outsider.

During that interview, Panday daughter of actor Chunky Pandey had said success in the industry is like "Koffee with Karan" and Chaturvedi had replied with a one-liner that went viral.

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When asked about referencing the moment in “The difference is jahaan humare sapne poore hote hain, wahi inka struggle shuru hota hai ." ‘Call Me Bae’, Panday said they have "kind of owned up to it".

"I said it like five years ago. I really struggled answering this question and honestly, I am done with that. I'm just trying to keep my head down and hope people like my work. And there is no struggle, I'm doing fine," she said.

"Call Me Bae" also stars Vir Das, Gurfateh Pirzada, Varun Sood, Vihaan Samat, Muskkaan Jaferi, Niharika Lyra Dutt, Lisa Mishra, and Mini Mathur.

The show is executive produced by Johar, Apoorva Mehta and Somen Mishra and will premiere on Prime Video on September 6 in Hindi with dubs in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.

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