Aishwarya Rai

“Aishwarya’s performance was the most difficult to execute. Since she is a spectator to all the events happening around her, Ash has to react as much as the audience will react to the drama unfolding in front of their eyes”, opening lines from Bollywood’s most speculated director.

Sitting comfortably in his office with a steaming cup of coffee, Ramu starts from how he got his sterling cast together. “I have grown up seeing Amitabh Bachchan’s movies and his sheer aura inspired the first film on Sarkar. Without Bachchan there cannot be a Sarkar. And Abhishek Bachchan, well he is a better actor than his father. Very intelligent and very clear what he should and not do. He came at a time when family dramas and romantic films were ruling the roost and he tried to type cast himself with only failures to his name. When I wanted a son to carry on the Nagre legacy, it had to be someone who could take over from Bachchan. And who better than his son.”

Leafing through the Sarkar Raj booklet, Ramu stops at a picture of Ash. He is deep in thought looking at her image and so surprises me with this line, “Her beauty is so overpowering that casting her was the most difficult. But there is a certain dignity and poise that I thought would lend the perfect foil for her character. Hers is the most difficult part. There are no songs, great locales or dramatic scenes for Ash. She has to react and every reaction has to be that of a first time reaction. Expressing through her face without any dialogues is not easy and clearly, Ash has outdone herself.”

The director continues with his little pauses, “Sarkar Raj is about performances with a lot of silences. Abhishek and I would discuss a lot more scenes and he has convinced me on many a occasion to do it his way. Unlike Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek does not trust me so much and so we landed up discussing his scenes. Ash on the contrary is a director’s actor and goes with my suggestions.”

To sum it up, he says that film making is all about decision making. The looks of all the characters took only 5 minutes. He says with a grimace, “I only suggested to Mr. Bachchan to wear black and the others to wear clothes that suit their characters. There was no photo shoot for their looks and the first time I saw them in costume was on the set. And as for Ram Gopal Varma’s Aag, we discussed looks for over a month. What a waste of time !!!”