Ash & Ash together!
by: Subhash K. Jha
- ians
What happens when two Ash’s team up? Confusion and a possible classic...
It all began with an SMS. 'Will U B My Jodha?': Ashutosh Gowariker messaged the actor. “It was so sweet of him. I said, of course. We finally met up last week here in Mumbai, and shook hands on the deal," says Aishwarya Rai who is on vacation for a few weeks.
Ash's schedule for the next year is airtight. She goes into Yashraj Film's Dhoom later this month, and then flies off for her first full-fledged international film Last Legion (with Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley) in August. Then she might squeeze in a schedule for Raj Kumar Santoshi's Samna (with Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgan) before, "I go straight into J P Dutta Saab's Umrao Jaan."
It's not over yet. Because before Dutta's opulent opus, Ash might do, believe it or not, a Walt Disney film! Finally in July 2006, Ashutosh Gowariker will get to dress her up as the haughty and defiant Rajput princess, Jodha.
An admirer of Ashutosh's works, Ash is all praise for his commitment. "I love the painstaking research he does for each film. For Jodha-Akbar he's going into reams of homework. It's almost like rediscovering a whole new era with the director.”
How will the two Ash-es be told apart on the sets? Ash bursts into peals of laughter. "I never knew people called him Ash until I was on a world tour with Aamir. I constantly heard him talking to someone called 'Ash' on the phone. Since it wasn't me, I wondered who it was."
Playing two Rajput princesses after another is a big challenge. "It sure is. But the Rajput princess in Jodha-Akbar is as different from the one in J P Dutta's Gayatri Devi, as can be humanly possible. The two roles go into two different eras and sensibilities. Only the ambience is similar. Likewise, my collaboration with Hrithik Roshan in Dhoom 2 and Jodha-Akbar. We're being paired for the first time, in not one but two films that are distinctly different.”
