In the Disney+ Hotstar thriller A Thursday (2022), Yami Gautam Dhar plays a kindergarten teacher, Naina Jaiswal, who one day takes her young students hostage and threatens to kill them unless she gets to speak with the prime minister (Dimple Kapadia).
Characters played Neha Dhupia and Atul Kulkarni are assigned to handle the crisis in the film, which has been directed by Behzad Khambata.
The actress, who welcomed her second child Guriq last October, plays a pregnant police officer, ACP Catherine Alvarez, in the hostage drama. She revealed how she was inspired by the Israeli series Hit & Run, which was premiered on Netflix last year and also featured a character who was pregnant.
Dhupia, who is married to actor Angad Bedi, recalled, “I think at that point while I was shooting, right before that I was watching this show called Hit & Run, starring Lior Raz, and there's a character called Tali [played by Moran Rosenblatt], who's pregnant and after the first two scenes, you start living her life, like you live all the other characters, as well.
"The show was a hit and there was a huge relatability for me as far as that character was concerned. We didn't go over the top with the pregnancy. Because you are pregnant, and some days, you work harder than the others, but the reference point was just as powerful because I have been pregnant before.
“This is my second time and you don't change as a person,” she added. “It is a little tough. It is uncomfortable. It's beautiful. What you're going through. But I always kept the reference point more towards being the cop and less towards my physicality changing because in any case, my physicality is going to be so natural to being pregnant because I generally was, I didn't have to work too much towards that (sic).”
The actress played a similar role in the Vidyut Jammwal-starrer Sanak (2021), which was premiered on Disney+ Hotstar last year.
A Thursday, produced by RSVP Movies and Blue Monkey Films, will be streamed on Disney+ Hotstar from 17 February.