Subhash K Jha

Director Deepa Mehta and actor Seema Biswas have one thing in common. They both badly need to loosen up. Seema has been doing unbroken series of stern wretchedly unhappy characters including the unforgiving mother in Sooraj Barjatya's Vivah and the profoundly grieving widow in Deepa Mehta's Water. Deepa has been going through her own bouts of depression after shooting the story of a battered wife in Heaven On Earth.

Both Biswas and Mehta are ready to whoop it up with a comedy. "It is a film called Stella - it’s about a joyous adventure of a wacky nanny. I just thought Seema was so right for it. So far we've only seen her in serious roles. Seema has an innate sense of fun and mischief which nobody has tapped," says Deepa even as she wraps up Heaven On Earth with Preity Zinta in Chandigarh.

Shoot for Stella starts in January 2008. "I'll be co-directing the film with my brother Dilip Mehta, before going into my next big project Luna with John. I hate to praise my own family. But Dilip is a very talented filmmaker," informs Deepa