Vidya Balan opens up on playing Amitabh Bachchan’s mother in Paa, admits she took ‘forever to say yes to the film’ – Times of India

Amongst the many path-breaking characters that Vidya has portrayed on screen, one of her most powerful roles was in Paa, where she played a largely single mother to 12-year-Auro (Amitabh Bachchan), who suffers from Progeria, a rare genetic condition that causes rapid, premature ageing.

In a recent interaction with Humans of Bombay, Vidya admitted that she had her apprehensions on saying yes to the movie, co-starring Abhishek Bachchan as Auro’s father. She said, “I took forever to say yes to that film, because when Balki came to me, firstly I thought, ‘What kind of story is this? He’s mad’. And why would he come to me to play Amitabh Bachchan’s mother? That was the only script that I shared with a couple of my friends. Because once the initial shock had worn off, I realised that it’s a great script.”

She further went on to say that after the initial apprehension abated, she was all in. She added, “As an actor, I wanted to jump at it, but I wanted a few people to read it tell me what they thought. And they all said, ‘My God, you must do this.’ But it took me a while to say yes. It wasn’t a calculated decision. But I was responding to my gut.”
Apart from Paa, Vidya’s other notable movies include Kahaani, No One Killed Jessica, The Dirty Picture and Jalsa.