How do you embrace a character you don’t morally align with? That was the big question for Deepika Padukone when she was approached for 
Gehraiyaan. The idea, she says, is to leave judgment at the door and be an honest performer. “There will be times when you may not relate to your character’s ideology or actions. But it’s an actor’s job to do the role with conviction, and make the character believable,” begins Padukone, who leads Shakun Batra’s film that stars Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday and Dhairya Karwa. 

Padukone essays the role of Alisha, who begins a torrid affair with her cousin’s fiancé. Batra flips love to study the other side of the coin — infidelity, while showing his characters for what they are — frail and flawed. “The one thing I have learnt from this film is not to judge [people] because there is always a reason why they do what they do. The minute you understand the emotion or the thought process behind the action, there is automatically empathy,” explains the actor.