Earlier this year, Sushmita Sen suffered a heart attack during the shooting of Aarya 3 in Jaipur. In a video, shared on Instagram a few days later, the actress revealed that she underwent an angioplasty and got a stent placed following 95 percent blockage in her main artery. Her Aarya 3 co-star Ila Arun, who plays her arch-nemesis in the show, now exclusively tells News18 Showsha about what transpired during the time when the shoot had to be halted due to Sen’s heart attack.
Arun recalls, “I had shot for two days in Mumbai and then I was supposed to fly to Jaipur. I had a 15-day schedule there and I was very excited about it. I was looking forward to spending some quality time with Sushmita. But two or three days before I was supposed to fly to Jaipur, I came to know that the shoot has been cancelled because Sushmita got a heart attack. I was like, ‘Oh god, yeh kya ho gaya?’ I was shocked because I’m personally very attached to her. And I couldn’t connect with her,” says Arun, who also shared screen space with the former Miss Universe in Chingaari (2006).
Arun was also apprehensive about the fate of the show that revolves around Sen, who plays the titular character. “I thought the show will be shelved. I kept thinking who can be the possible replacement for Sushmita. After all, she’s the real Aarya. We had a few days of shoot for the third season and I thought that they might make some changes to the script. But then one day, I got a call from them that the shoot is resuming,” she shares.
But she was taken aback by what she saw when she reached the set in Jaipur. “This was in March. I was asked to report soon because Sushmita was already on set. I was surprised as to how can someone who had suffered a cardiac arrest a month back get back to work so soon. Sushmita, later on, told me that she had a 95% blockage,” she remarks.
Arun further adds, “When I reached the set, she was rehearsing. I thought of greeting her. I didn’t know how to face her or what to tell her or ask her. The script wasn’t completely in place but I saw her doing full action and sweating it out. She was kicking up the bad guys with a sword in her hand.”
In fact, what left Arun ‘dumbfounded and speechless’ was the fact that Sushmita performed all the stunts and action sequences ‘completely on her own’ without a body double despite encountering a health scare. “When she saw me, she came up to me and told me, ‘Don’t worry. We will rock.’ I was so impressed. Usually what happens in films is that the actor is there during close-up shots but there’s always a body double during the long shot action sequences. But with Sushmita, I saw her doing all the action scenes right before me even after a 95% heart blockage,” states the Haddi and Sherni actor.
Aarya 3 is all set to premiere on Disney+ Hotstar on November 3.
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