Pooja Bhatt on Gangubai Kathiawadi: ‘Alia Bhatt was a girl, and now, she is a woman’

Bollywood actor-filmmaker Pooja Bhatt recently watched her ser Alia Bhatt’s film Gangubai Kathiawadi. Pooja shared that she watched the first-day first-show of the movie and heard people whling in the theatre.
Pooja told Aaj Tak, “Usually, you don’t expect multiplex audiences to whle and shout, but while watching Gangubai, I heard whles, screams, yelling in the theatre.” Pooja added that the Sanjay Leela Bhansali film proved that Alia has “hit the mark and how.” She added, “She (Alia) was a girl, and now, she is a woman and she is dazzling.”
Gangubai Kathiawdi released in theatres in February and is set to cross the Rs 100 crore mark. The film has so far earned Rs 99.64 crore, as per film trade analyst Taran Adarsh.

In an earlier interview with , Alia Bhatt addressed the topic of her casting in the film. “People did think that I am not right for this particular part because of the feeling it gave. I totally understand where they are coming from because I was also one of those people when I first heard the narration. I wondered whether I’ll be able to pull it off. But the big answer is that this is a director who’s been working for 25 years and he obviously has a vision. He’s not going to do things just for the heck of it. It is more magical when you don’t expect someone to pull something off, or that they’re not right for the role but they make it work,” she said.
The Indian Express’ Shubhra Gupta gave Gangubai Kathiawdi 2 stars and wrote, “Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest is the kind of old-fashioned dialogue-heavy, sentiment-on-sleeve film which Bollywood is forgetting how to make.”