Trust Bollywood to look for fresher ways to engage the audiences. While real-life couples have been a hit way to lure the viewers in, this time around, real life siblings are being cast together by filmmakers to play brother and sister on-screen.

For one, Shraddha Kapoor as Haseena and Siddhant Kapoor as Dawood will soon be seen playing siblings on screen for the first time in Haseena: The Queen of Mumbai.

Siddhant and Shraddha Kapoor

Says Siddhant, “It becomes easy when you work with your siblings, because you’ve been doing nautanki together since childhood. We dreamt of working together. We have a very strong connect, and the characters we portrayed are very different from what we are. But we’re generally laughing around and having fun all the time.”

Shahid Kapoor and his half sister Sanah were also seen together in Shaandaar.

Apart from the two sibling duo, Huma Qureshi and Saqib Saleem have been paired together as sister and brother in the upcoming movie, Dobara. Says Huma, “It’s indeed a matter of pride for both of us. We bringing in the trend of brother and sister working together makes us feel great. We hope to get more such films where both of us perform as brother and sister on reel as well.”

Adds Saqib, “We always wanted to do a film together. I never guessed it would happen so soon though. I’ve done six films, while Huma must be eight films old. And brother and sister working as co-actors was a great learning experience for both of us. We’ve become closer to knowing the inside and out about each other. This makes us feel closer to each other now.”

Ask Huma about how difficult being professional on the sets with your brother can be, and she says, “Being a woman, I think we’re programmed in a way that we don’t show a dual persona with our family members. I could not be very professional and couldn’t restrict myself to limiting my discussions to that of just an actor.”

— With inputs from Lipika Varma