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EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Rakul Preet Singh recalls being replaced thrice in initial days of career: They wanted a star
Rakul Preet Singh is presently promoting her upcoming social-comedy, Chhatriwali.
In a recent conversation with Pinkvilla, Rakul Preet Singh - who is presently promoting her upcoming film - Chhatriwali, opened up on her initial days of hustle in the maximum city to get work. She had arrived in Mumbai in 2011. “I don’t like the word struggle, but yes (there was) struggle. Standing in ques for auditioning, trying to be present everywhere, trying to meet people. You know the first two or two-and-half years, I signed Yaariyan in the beginning of 2013. So the first two years were just trying to meet people and figuring your way, and I think at that time because you are so focused and driven - I am someone who never looked at it as a struggle. I was ready to do that hard work because I knew it was not going to be easy,” says Rakul Preet Singh.
She further adds, “It was a road less travelled. I didn’t know anybody in the industry. I used to live in Kandivali, so I would drive all the way to Bandra, work out here, and stay in Bandra. I used to sit at a cafe or at my trainer’s studio itself and carry all kinds of changes in my car. So in case of an opportunity for an audition, I would be around Andheri and Bandra the whole day, and then go back to Kandivali in the evening. I was staying there because I couldn’t afford Bandra at that point. So it was a lot of learning, a lot of growth, and there was some beauty about those two years as well.” 
The actress states that if you don’t face rejections, you can never taste success. “I feel you don’t value success when you get it easy. So there is a sweetness to the struggle always.”
Rakul shares that she has always been a very positive person. “I have always been very tough in my head, that if I have thought of something it will happen. I had that kind of an attitude, and possibly that goes to my upbringing and the whole fauji way of being. Tough army background. So I was like if this is not happening, then something else will happen. It never really dejected me, but there were times when I signed a film and then I was replaced. There was a film I shot for four days and then I was replaced. But the thing was at that point I was such a confident girl, that I would be like something else will come up. I always knew that it would,” says Rakul Preet Singh.
Was she given a reason for being replaced? “Yes, I was given a reason that they wanted to go ahead with someone who is already a star, which I understood. Because that producer’s last film which also had a newer girl had released on our first day of shoot and it tanked. So I think he got a little conscious and wanted to have two stars. The guy was already a star, I wouldn't take names right now, but I was okay. It happened thrice with me, and the third time I remember I was like, ‘okay now I really need to get to work mode’. But never was there a time when I felt that I would be able to do it or not,” she says.
Rakul further elaborates, “In the beginning when I moved to Mumbai I told my parents I am giving myself two years. If in two years I don’t crack anything I am going to get back to my studies because I was a good student. I also knew that I would not do anything which is not the best. I didn’t want to be a struggler. I didn’t want to be that person who is working to make ends meet, at any point, in any profession. So I had given myself two years, and luckily things worked out. But it’s always a journey. The struggle is constant, it just changes. Now the struggles are different. People may think that it is easy but at every point in your career, at every point in your life, your challenges change, your struggles change.”
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