Exclusive! Neha Dhupia on her short film 'Step Out': My big win is when someone watches it and starts talking about mental health

Neha Dhupia turned to short film titled ‘Step Out’ during lockdown and the 11-minute narrative features her in the role of a psychiatrist and Dev Dutt as her patient. The short film is produced by Neha under her banner with Hridaye Nagpal calling the shots. Revealing why she took up the venture, Neha shares, “There were multiple factors for me to be doing this short film.As an actor, I was feeling very rusty as I was pregnant, then I gave birth and then the lockdown happened. So for me, I had told Angad that I will be continuing to do my work. But I don't think I could commit to it as it also has uncertain sides to commit to doing an acting job. Then I just wanted to come back to my original size as I had put on 23-25 kilos, so I took a year off and as I wanted to lose all that weight which I did."

Speaking about her association with ‘Step Out’, Neha adds, “A part of me was excited to work but the lockdown happened and we started living our lives very differently as nothing mattered much as long as your healthy and fine. After a point when the fear started coming down, we started focussing on work. One fine day I got a call from Hridaye and he told me that he's doing a film on mental health and abuse to which my bigger concern was: I could do this as an actor or amplify this voice by doing much more to it as a producer.”
Sharing her opinion about short films, Neha Dhupia adds, “For short films, it's a growing market so there's not much profit to be made. My win's going to be big when someone messages me and says after seeing 'Step Out' we started talking about mental health. I as in a storm of controversies during Roadies as well, where I took a stand against abuse but it was misunderstood. So there have been many reasons why I wanted to take up this voice forward.”