Actor Janhvi Kapoor says she hopes she is able to convince the audience to look beyond her 'bholi' and 'bechari' image through the upcoming crime comedy "Good Luck Jerry". The 25-year-old, who made her debut with the 2018 romantic drama "Dhadak", has starred in films such as "Roohi", "Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl" and the Netflix anthology "Ghost Stories". "Good Luck Jerry" is the remake of the 2018 Tamil film "Kolamaavu Kokila", starring Nayanthara and Yogi Babu.
"I saw the original film and thought it was cool and funny. I'm a big fan of Nayanthara and Yogi Babu. Nayanthara was just such a bada** in the film. I thought 'Good Luck Jerry' was a very new space for me.
People have kind of mentally put me in this box of 'bholi si hai', 'shaant' and 'bechari' (innocent, quiet, helpless). Maybe it's the energy I give out. It's also probably because of the films I've done," Kapoor told PTI.
In "Good Luck Jerry", she plays Jaya Kumari alias Jerry, an immigrant from Bihar who becomes a drug dealer in Punjab to foot the medical bills for her mother who is diagnosed with stage 2 cancer.
"Nayanthara in that film was all of that innocent and simple, but her character had a solid arc. I thought this film was a good opportunity to show people that there's more to me than that and to have fun with it," she added.
The film, directed by Siddharth Sengupta, came to Kapoor at the time when she was craving to do a comedy movie. She has previously starred in "Roohi", the 2021 horror comedy.
I wanted to try my hand at comedy. I was so pumped to do it in this film. It's not like I have witty one-liners in the film, something I really want to do. But 'Good Luck Jerry' is more situational," she said.
Kapoor said the film's cultural setting also brought a newness to the Hindi version. The original film, which marked the directorial debut of Nelson of "Beast" fame, followed Nayanthara's Kokila who gets involved with the drug trafficking mafia active in the small towns of Tamil Nadu.
"Ours is a completely different film in terms of the story and even in terms of characters. I saw the original once, understood the flavour and then tried to find Jerry.
"She (the character) is different here, in the sense that she finds herself a little bit more at the end and turns into a less apologetic person. Or at least in my head that was a very conscious thought that I wanted to create," she added.
Written by Pankaj Matta, "Good Luck Jerry" is backed by Aanand L Rai's Colour Yellow Productions and LYCA Productions, in association with Sundial Entertainment. Also starring Deepak Dobriyal, Mita Vashisht, Neeraj Sood, Sushant Singh and Saurabh Sachdeva, the film will release on Disney+ Hotstar on July 29.
