Kritika was born in Bareilly, but her family hails from Sukhpur in Madhya Pradesh. She studied in Delhi before finding work in TV as a teenager, which brought her to Mumbai. “I come from a small town in Madhya Pradesh. So I’m very aware of my privilege. My parents still live there. “So, a part of me belongs to a really small part of the country, and even though my living standards are different now and I’m travelling abroad, a part of me remains deeply connected to my roots,” she says.Kritika married at the age of 37. She admits that most of her childhood friends got married a decade earlier. “I’ve recently got married, while most of my friends got married, maybe 15 years back, because they felt that pressure, but I did not have that in my life. In that sense, I’ve been lucky to have parents who never stopped me from doing anything right,” the actor says.

On the benefits of marrying late in life

It’s been nearly four months since Kritika and Gaurav tied the knot, but the actor says it is still sinking in. “I feel the same so far. Sometimes I have to wake up and remind myself I have a husband now. It feels the same. And that’s how it should be. One of the things about marrying late in life is that you’re very sure when you do it, and you do it your way. All my decisions are independent. So is the case with Gaurav,” she explains.While many celebrity couples opt for grand weddings or even destination weddings, Kritika was always certain she wanted to get married in Mumbai. “Both of us started working very young and left our hometowns, and we made a life in Mumbai, so we wanted to get married only here,” she says, adding, “We didn’t want a destination wedding. We wanted to do it at home. Luckily, we had space for people. That itself is a big deal in this city. This is where we found ourselves. We found each other. So it’s just it was perfect.”

‘Never seen him that vulnerable’

After pictures and videos of their wedding surfaced online, a moment that caught everyone’s attention was Gaurav in tears upon seeing Kritika. Talking about that raw, heartfelt moment, Kritika says, “I was in disbelief. I did not expect that at all. I’ve never seen him like that, that vulnerable. I’ve seen him vulnerable, but I didn’t think he would be that way. I was getting ready inside. I was absolutely unaware of what was happening outside. I came out to see this guy just so emotional, and tears in everybody’s eyes when I walked into the room. I was just in disbelief.”Gaurav is a sports presenter and anchor with two decades of experience. Kritika says even he was shocked by how vulnerable he got in that moment. “He’s a live show guy. He is used to big moments. So he was also really shocked by how emotional he felt,” says Kritika.

Kritika Kamra in Matka King

On the work front, Kritika is awaiting the release of Amazon Prime Video’s Matka King. The show tells a fictional story inspired by real-life matka barons of Mumbai (then Bombay) – Ratan Khatri and Kalyanji Bhagat. But the show talks about the rise of Brij Bhatti, a fictional matka king, played by Vijay Varma. Also starring Sai Tamhankar, Gulshan Grover, Siddharth Jadhav, and Girish Kulkarni, Matka King releases on Amazon Prime Video on April 17.