Actress Ileana D’Cruz, who is playing a queen in a royal family of Rajasthan in the upcoming film Baadshaho, says some sequences of the movie were shot in a real “filthy” prison and that added to her performance.

Sharing her experience of shooting in the multi-starrer film, Ileana said, “My character Geetanjali is based on a real character from Rajasthan’s royal family. I found the character very interesting, so was the shooting process. As my character goes through a journey, various emotional ups and down points of them, one of the memorable shooting experiences was during the shoot in a filthy jail.

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“It was quite a suffocating space where we shot. Interestingly, my character was also going through a suffocating phase of her life in the film. So I think shooting in the filthy prison added to my performance in the film. Oh God… There was some weird stink… But the whole atmosphere added some authenticity to the character,” said the actress.

Set in 1975, during the time of Emergency, the story of Baadshaho — directed by Milan Luthria — revolves around a royal family, how their property and tons of gold were looted by the government and how Geetanjali with the help of some of her close subordinates, struggles to rescue the gold.

According to Ileana, this is one of the rare characters she is portraying that is quite close to her personality.

“You know, Geetanjali (her character name in the film) goes through a lot of troubles without losing her cool because she is a strong woman, sure in her head about what she wants and how she will get that. There are some similarities in my journey too.

“Fortunately, I have a very good upbringing that makes me a strong person, I know what I want from life and I never settled for less,” said Ileana, who earlier featured in Barfi! and Rustom.

After debuting in Telugu film Devadasu and cementing her space in southern filmdom, Ileana entered Bollywood in 2012 with Anurag Basu’s Barfi!.

Though she does not come from a film family, in a gradual process, she manages to find a way to see the potential of a good script for her.

“Either you like or dislike a story when you hear it… That is very instinctive. But when it comes to the relevance of my role in the film, I take that character away from the story and see if still the story looks complete without that character. If not, then is it an important character of the story that I am being offered? Then only, I say ‘yes’ to a film,” Ileana said.

While her last release Mubarakan turned out to be commercially successful and she played a quirky character, according to her, “Geetanjali is the polar opposite of Sweety and that is why I am feeling a pressure to get an acceptance in such a grey, badass role.”

Produced by Bhushan Kumar, Baadshaho also features Ajay Devgn, Emraan Hashmi, Esha Gupta and Vidyut Jammwal. It is releasing on Friday.