Ananya Panday talks about her first comedic role in “Call Me Bae”

Prime Video Call me honey is not only Ananya Panday’s series debut, but also the first time she plays a comedic role.

The Hindi-language series follows Bae (played by Panday), an heiress whose luxurious life is quickly turned upside down. She then embarks on a journey to Mumbai to build a new life for herself and finds work as a journalist.

Panday knew she wanted to be part of Call me honey from the beginning. “When I got the script, I read all eight episodes in one night,” Panday told Deadline. “I devoured the script and knew I had to be a part of it because I love the journey of the character. She starts at one point and then ends up in a completely different place, but her core remains the same. It's very easy to pigeonhole a character like that and stereotype her as a silly girl or a fool, but there was so much humanity in her and I loved the challenge of bringing that out.”

Panday said that another exciting part Call me honey took on her first comedic role. “I have done comedy films before where the other actors produce the comedy and I am just someone who reacts to it,” said Panday. “But this show allowed me to explore my comedic timing and physical comedy, which I have never done before. It was also one of my biggest challenges. When you are doing a comedy, you really don't know if the joke is going to land because everyone on the set has heard the jokes before, so not everyone is laughing. You have to kind of judge it yourself, like – is this funny? Isn't it funny?”

Call me honey The film also stars Vir Das, Gurfateh Pirzada, Varun Sood, Vihaan Samat, Muskkaan Jaferi, Niharika Lyra Dutt, Lisa Mishra and Mini Mathur.

Although the cast didn't spend much time together before filming, Panday said it ultimately had a positive impact on their performances. “When we got on set, we reacted to each other quite naturally in everything we did. Keeping things spontaneous and improvising helped a lot.”

After six years as an actor in films such as Kho Gaye Hum Kahan And Dreamgirl 2Panday said there are many other genres she would love to act in to hone her craft. “I haven't tried horror films yet and also never played a real-life character or done a biopic. I've never had to study a real person, which would be so much fun and so fascinating,” Panday added.

Call me honey was written by Ishita Moitra, Samina Motlekar and Rohit Nair, with Karan Johar, Apoorva Mehta and Somen Mishra as executive producers for Dharmatic Entertainment.