The Cover Story: Richa Chadha And Ali Fazal On Saying 'I Do!'

Before they finally tie the knot this month, Richa Chadha and Ali Fazal open up about planning a wedding multiple times, and staying in love throughout

We’re picking furniture, setting up lights and camera, when a tall figure rushes onto the set for this shoot. It’s actor Ali Fazal, who has walked straight from his car into the corner room with its big arched window. The Mirzapur thespian wants to look around, meet the team and exchange views on the photoshoot, which, not incidentally, has been scheduled just ahead of the wedding that he and fellow actor Richa Chadha have been planning for over two years. In contrast, Richa takes off straight from her car to her vanity van to get the glam process started without delay, and emerges from it some time later dressed as a bride in a stunning red lehenga, ready for action.


These two different personalities keep the room warm with their subtle exchanges, eye contact, unsaid chemistry and small gestures of affection. “Will you please eat in my vanity?” asks Ali after the first change. “There’s a person who lives between the spaces of the things that people see her do, and I saw that person, and I fell in love with her. There are all kinds of people in those places that make up Richa. We share a lot of interesting quirky things, and awkwardnesses… the comfort that I have with her in my silences is special; sometimes, you don’t have to talk verbally to be able to talk…,” he says while trying to find words to describe his partner of over seven years. It was not, however, love at first sight for both of them. Ali claims that he was enamoured with Richa after having seen her in Gangs Of Wasseypur. Richa, on the other hand, had a whole different idea of who Ali was.


"We share a lot of interesting quirky things, and awkwardnesses… the comfort that I have with her in my silences is special; sometimes, you don’t have to talk verbally to be able to talk…" - Ali Fazal
"You’ll witness celebrations that resonate with our personalities, where we respect our cultures, music, art and things that make us who we are as Indians." - Richa Chadha
"We live on the imbalances, and we love that. We complete each other, because we are not the perfect 50-50, but that changes with each situation. That’s what keeps us uniquely interested in each other." - Ali Fazal
"I would like to tell other girls who are reading this, who want to get married to the man of their choice ¬ this is not the most important day of your life. This is a very important day in your life. It could be the most beautiful day of your life, for sure; it could be the most heartwarming day of your life, but don’t place unnecessary importance by saying that this defines you." - Richa Chadha

"We share a lot of interesting quirky things, and awkwardnesses… the comfort that I have with her in my silences is special; sometimes, you don’t have to talk verbally to be able to talk…" - Ali Fazal

“I had a preconceived notion about him when I met him on the sets of Fukrey. I had always known him to be decent and respectful, but kinda naughty and also kinda nutty. I could relate to his nutty side and I could also relate to the naughty side. Among the other boys in the group, I felt closest to him in terms of my mind, and I think that was the seed of it all,” she recalls. Ali has no illusions about Richa’s first impression of him. “She thought I was a legit weirdo before she got to know me, but I was a fan even before I met her. My first impression of her was from the GoW movie. I had never seen that kind of range in a person and I was floored. As an actor, the kind of compassion one needs to have to be able to deliver such a performance with such nuances… that attracted me, and I thought it would be fun to see someone like that or know or meet her and pick her brain.” It’s easy to pick up on the emotion in Ali’s voice as he takes us back in time.


Cut to 2022. Richa and Ali are set to tie the knot in what they describe as a tasteful wedding surrounded by their family and friends, with art and artists and performers whom they both admire, enjoy and love. “I think you’ll witness celebrations that resonate with our personalities, where we respect our cultures, music, art and things that make us who we are as Indians,” Richa tells us. “And, being artistes, it’s lovely to have the love and support of other artistes as well. You’ll see I can’t say too much.”

"You’ll witness celebrations that resonate with our personalities, where we respect our cultures, music, art and things that make us who we are as Indians." - Richa Chadha

This wedding has been in the making for over three years. Richa and Ali first planned to exchange vows in 2020. “No one had any idea of what kinda shape COVID would eventually take,” she points out. “We were trying to do it in March and April 2020, but then the world knows what happened and I think we were very wise to postpone it because of travel bans and everything that happened the world over. The next year, when we thought of doing it, there was the second wave and it was horrific for our country in particular.” It was also personally tragic for the couple as Ali lost two family members to COVID ¬ his mother during the first wave and grandfather during the second. “We decided we’d do it when the world becomes right and when it feels right,” he recalls.



After planning, cancellations, rescheduling and replanning three to four times over, the couple now wants to have a simple, tasteful affair. “I have no illusions about myself; I am not a princess, I just want an easy, beautiful, tasteful wedding,” Richa states. Still, if she hadn’t met Ali, she tells us she might not have considered getting married at all. “I was never the kind to think about getting married; it was not something on my list.” But, here we are, at Great Eastern Home in Byculla, Mumbai, on an exceptionally humid August day, with no sign of rain, watching them work in the full splendour of a bridal trousseau, a month ahead of their wedding. Life has its ways.

"We live on the imbalances, and we love that. We complete each other, because we are not the perfect 50-50, but that changes with each situation. That’s what keeps us uniquely interested in each other." - Ali Fazal

Watching them pose makes Ali’s statement quite clear ¬ of having found the comfort of being silent with Richa. The beauty of their bond lies in the ease that they seem to have around each other. There’s nothing loud that screams for attention, their body language is in sync. Credit is due to them as exceptional performers, but the synchronicity of their personalities is both palpable and enviable. However, as stable as their relationship is, they don’t think of themselves as balanced. Nothing about their lives is balanced, Ali quips, except for their diets. “We live on the imbalances, and we love that. We complete each other, because we are not the perfect 50-50, but that changes with each situation. That’s what keeps us uniquely interested in each other.” Ali is always slightly apprehensive that his words might be misconstrued. “I am very conversational, so I always worry about how people interpret what I say,” he explains. Richa, on the other hand, doesn’t care about what people have to say about her life and choices. She quotes J Krishnamurti: It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. “If society is sick and we are witnessing it in rapes and murders and lawlessness and greed and corporate corruption and just lies and moral degradation, do you really want to take society seriously and what it says about you?” she asks. “Who is society, what makes society, and should everyone constantly live in fear? I don’t think so!”


As the shoot progresses, we ask Ali how he fell in love with Richa, “It is very mysterious,” he says. “I don’t think I can take you through my love story because it is one of the most beautiful personal journeys of my life, but I can tell you that it is a liking that is unmatched in the life that I have lived until now, and a friendship that I am really, really proud of.” He adds, “Like they say in the movies, it just happened.” Watching them around each other, we agree. There’s a depth that Richa and Ali continue to explore and invoke in each other. It’s difficult to say who is whose muse in this relationship but there’s compassion, conversation and candour. “There’s a lot of compassion in me that has come from this relationship and a lot of peace,” Ali declares. “This relationship has made me a better person.”

"I would like to tell other girls who are reading this, who want to get married to the man of their choice ¬ this is not the most important day of your life. This is a very important day in your life. It could be the most beautiful day of your life, for sure; it could be the most heartwarming day of your life, but don’t place unnecessary importance by saying that this defines you." - Richa Chadha

This is also a couple that is grounded in their reality and is cognisant of the world changing around them. There are no unrealistic notions about marriage and the tropes around it. They have never shied away from talking about their relationship in public. They also didn’t feel the need to publicise every aspect of it. “Your marriage, your partner, what your wedding looks like, what your lehenga looks like are not what define you,” Richa states. She wants women to take the onus of themselves as individuals and wants the world to step away from making weddings the biggest day in a woman’s life. “This narrative where women are often being told that ‘this is the biggest day of your life’, that ‘this is the most important day of your life’ is kind of pressurising, and it is untrue. For me, the biggest day or the most important day of my life could be when I decided to move to Bombay (Mumbai) or when I decided to become an actor,” she avers. “In that sphere of my life is where I met my partner. What I mean is there are other things in the world apart from marriage that one needs to focus on. I would like to tell other girls who are reading this, who want to get married to the man of their choice ¬ this is not the most important day of your life. This is a very important day in your life. It could be the most beautiful day of your life, for sure; it could be the most heartwarming day of your life, but don’t place unnecessary importance by saying that this defines you.”


As individuals, both performers come off as strong, confident personalities who refuse to let go of themselves in order to be so many things they become on-screen and otherwise. Richa and Ali have found in each other the art of co-existing and being themselves, while being in love. As we got to know them a little better through the course of the day, we understood those beautiful spaces. The spaces that they have created for themselves and how content they are in them as individuals, as artistes, as performers, as lovers, and partners who are both nutty and naughty.

Photography: Sahil Behal
Art Direction: Bendi Vishan
Make Up for Richa Chada: Kunj Shah
Hair for Richa Chadha: Rami Halder
Hair and Make for Ali Fazal: Arbaz Shaikh
Location Courtesy: The Great Eastern Home

Also Read: The Unspoken Truths Of Dating Someone For A Long Time