Shanaya Kapoor Recalls Breaking Down During a Claustrophobic Underwater Shoot for 'Tu Yaa Main': 'I Felt Trapped'

How do you act out fear? Sometimes by living it. That was the case for actor Shanaya Kapoor during the shoot of her survival thriller Tu Yaa Main, a film that pushed her to confront some of her deepest anxieties. Co-starring Adarsh Gourav, the project required its actors to inhabit moments of genuine distress, rather than merely simulate them for the camera.

For filmmaker Bejoy Nambiar, “creating discomfort” was central to his film’s survival-thriller narrative, quite literally throwing his cast in the deep end. The approach proved especially demanding for Kapoor, who was navigating multiple personal fears while filming.

“She has a fear of heights and closed spaces, being underwater, and she had to [experience] all those things for extended periods of time,” Nambiar tells The Hollywood Reporter India. “She had to really overcome all of that, and not once did she complain.”

That resolve held until the final day of the shoot, when director Bejoy Nambiar says Kapoor "broke down" and filming was immediately halted.

Recalling the sequence, Kapoor describes an underwater scene that pushed her to a breaking point after her leg got stuck. Enclosed beneath the water, surrounded by darkness, she says she felt unable to surface on the third take, with Gourav and the camera positioned behind her.

"Those two seconds underwater felt like two minutes. I couldn't exit; I felt trapped. So when I came out, I just started crying!" Kapoor said.

The physical demands of the film weren’t limited to a single sequence. Both actors spent long hours in freezing cold water, with little reprieve. “We had to be submerged in the water for long hours,” Gourav says, adding that they would only get out of the pool for lunch breaks.

Tu Yaa Main is an official adaptation of the Thai film, The Pool. The film is scheduled to release on February 13.