Call it an irrational fear or not, but for Rasika Dugal, the genre of supernatural horror sends a shiver down her spine. So much so that she has no qualms accepting that she hasn’t watched any scary film or series. “The last [psychological thriller] I watched was 100 days [1991] that featured Madhuri Dixit-Nene. I just shut the genre out of my head post that,” says Dugal, who wrapped up her first horror thriller Adhura, in May.

The decision to take up the series was a way for the actor to “conquer my fears”, but it was definitely not something that came easily to her. “When my director asked me to watch a few sequences, I refused because it was too scary for me. I am a phattu [scaredy-cat]. I asked them if it could wait because my husband [Mukul Chadda] was out of town and I didn’t want to come back to an empty house after that. Furthermore, I wanted to try this genre and see how it works out for me,” she says of the series that sees her playing a school counsellor. Dugal credits directors Gaurav Chawla and Ananya Banerjee for guiding her through the project, but claims that sometimes she couldn’t comprehend their explanations. “To dispense logic and understand a scene, Ananya would tell me, ‘Like in a horror film…’, but I would look blankly at her because I had no [reference in my head]. I would tell her, ‘I don’t know what that means,” jokes Dugal, adding, “Gaurav and Ananya are two talented directors and I had a ball working with them.”