Neha Dhupia: "Being Sexy Is A Full-Time Job"

“Being sexy is a full time job,” she pouts. Neha Dhupia is ribbing us. This is her third FHM cover in three years. “Do I have a fan in FHM?” she asks? We tell her we barely get through the year before setting up another cover. “I want to do a vintage bridal kind of a shoot she tells us…how will anyone do a shoot like that with me if I keep doing these sexy shoots for FHM?”

This ladies and gents is only a small sliver of what it is like shooting with Neha Dhupia. There is constant jibing with a strong undercurrent of insanity thrown in. “I know what kind of pictures FHM likes…wait let me give you the FHM expression,” she teases. She’s even named the expression after FHM.

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At the shoot, she has very politely taken over some of the control - she can take better selfies than the square of the crew put together. Suddenly she turns around to ask if we like selfies. We ask her if men should even be taking them and she laughs. “I don’t know why you guys shy away…its being a bit like men watching Gossip Girls and never admitting it. Its anyway more manly than men wearing pink shirts,” she laughs.

“Yuck no please we don’t want to see naked men,” she laughs when we ask her what sort of selfies men should be taking. I don’t mind if men take some bum selfies though, as long as they are wearing shorts.” The cover she later tells us is sort of like a bum selfie, only there should have been more bum in the picture. “I like bum selfies…why do you think I shot this picture?” she teases, “Or maybe I got carried away.” “A lot of women who put the camera on top of the head to take a selfie, so you get a perfect view of their boobs and not of their face. I know you guys might enjoy it but I don’t want to wake up in the morning to a picture of someone’s boobs.”

That’s the great thing about Neha Dhupia, she is one hundred percent certifiably a hoot, she fights against the urge to pseudo intellectualise everything from a cup of tea to the general elections, she is immensely attractive and she carries herself with the ease of someone who is hell bent on downplaying it.

We ask her how much of IPL she is following. It’s a wink wink nudge nudge question. Meant to tease her about the reported link-ups with a little known cricketer called Yuvraj Singh. Link ups which have seen her propelled to the heights of polls seeking out hottest WAGs of IPL. “Am I atleast winning?” she asks. She is single though. Write it like “I am ahhhh (hesitating badly) single,” she laughs.

We tell her she’s been single now for the last four years and three interviews. “Listen I am packing my bags and going to Switzerland with my mum dad…would I be doing it if there was a man by my side?” she does present a viable argument. Unfortunately, she is also travelling at a time when the aforementioned cricketer might be busy with IPL. “I do go out on occasional dates. But what can I tell you this shit hasn’t worked out for me. Maybe I am too overqualified to be in the relationship circle,” she laughs.

Another great thing about her is that she is an effortless interviewee, as an interviewer you don’t need to think of questions, conversation points to bother about. She takes care of it all. A friend of mine recently set me up on a blind date turns out she had told a man that he was meeting Neha but didn’t tell her it was ‘Dhupia’ he was meeting. “So this boy was sitting all alone in the restaurant…lets call him Kabeer.” We protest. Why Kabeer? But by the then the story has already moved on. “So I go up to him and say Hi I am Neha and do you know what’s the first thing he said to me? He said ‘CAN WE DO A SELFIE’ I died. I was like Shit. I am going to be on his FB page!”

Has she wondered about the possibility that the boy in question might still be dating her or worst still the father of her two children? “Haha. I have to check on that. But people make up all sorts of stories…apparently I heard, I was dating some boy in my college! I went to a convent!” she laughs. But Neha Dhupia even though she might make it sound like that isn’t always upbeat. “Going out for a date in Mumbai is taxing because we don’t know if they are going out with you for a date because of your first name or your last name.” A lot of us single actresses keep talking about what it is to be single when the world insists that we are having a whale of a time, dating a new man every three days.

On the work front too interesting things are happening. She is a part of a movie called ’21 topon ki salaami, and has a movie called Ungli and then a movie called ‘Santa Banta’. “Last year was a little slow because two movies got delayed to this year…but it happens.” A song in 21 topon ki Salaami requires her to reference 9 actresses from the decades, a song in which you will see her flaunting some typical 70s curves. “There is a little bit of that sexy jiggly belly thing happening.”

But what’s even more significant than her choice of movies are the movies she has turned down – for instance a sequel to Julie which instantly propelled her to superstardom amongst college kids and established her as a sex icon. “I don’t regret doing Julie. But in our country and in cinema people form the image too quickly. If you are someone who plays a sex worker in your second film – people think that she is okay with backless shots or exposing. It’s strange because everyone does backless shots but I got stuck with that image for five years. I don’t want to spend the next five years being stuck on the same image too.”

Is there a little bit of a dichotomy there? There is and there isn’t. Neha Dhupia is one of those really hot girls who want to be taken seriously, her taste for “Left of Centre” movies as she puts it has already to some extent done that, the rest is being done by her refusal to do movies like Julie. Does that mean the FHM Shoots would stop too? No chance. She loves just being. Those other shoots in the bra with open shirts might end though, she laughs.

From the May 2014 issue of FHM India.