MUMBAI: Supernatural shows often take you into a world of imagination and leave you feeling spooked out not just by their ghastly graphics but also by the way they bring alive the characters on screen, giving viewers a complete edge of the seat feel. While the graphics might make the scene enactment as simple as one, two, three, viewers often fail to see the efforts it takes for the makers and actors to bring that realistic effect on screen. Stepping beyond just delivering dialogues, an actor’s job requires incredible amounts of skill and dedication, especially when it comes to genres like supernatural that require immense physical effort and mental duress to bring out the spookiness of the role. So much so that actors sometimes injure themselves while essaying a character.  Actress Prakruti Mishra had to go through the same rigmarole when she recently made her debut into the supernatural space with &TV’s Laal Ishq.

The superstar of Orissa who bagged a National award for her Oriya film, later went on to become a household name with &TV’s Bitti Businesswali. Having developed a deep fascination for supernatural and horror films, the actress has been wishing to play a role in this genre for quite some time now. Her wish came true with &TV’s Laal Ishq, but the portrayal of her character was much tougher than she imagined. While shooting for the episode, Prakruti went through some physical distress for the character, so much so that she wounded herself badly on two occasions.

Talking about this, Prakruti said, “Being a part of a supernatural series was on my wish list for the longest time. In this episode of Laal Ishq, I play the character of a Doctor (Madhura) whose husband is an occultist. Although he warns her about an onset of a supernatural force, she leaves to help her best friend. The entire episode will give you an eerie vibe and bringing that to life on screen is no easy task. I realised that it takes a lot of preparation to get into a character for a supernatural show, especially physically.”

She further added, “To bring that spooky feel the makers had these huge fans set up for hours together, dust was constantly flying and I had to run around screaming in fear which led me to inhaling all the dust. In another scene we were required to shoot with knives that fly around with high intensity, I hurt myself twice while shooting that scene (laughs). Although this was no fatal injury I realised that as easy as it looks on screen, shooting for supernatural shows is much more difficult than our usual daily soaps.”

Won’t be wrong to say that supernatural as a genre is no easy feat.