Five years after Guzaarish, Aishwarya Rai returns to work

The last time she faced the camera was way back in 2010, when she was shooting for filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Guzaarish. Now, nearly five years later — and the birth of daughter Aaradhya, who is now three years old — Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is back to work.

The last time she faced the camera was way back in 2010, when she was shooting for filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Guzaarish. Now, nearly five years later — and the birth of daughter Aaradhya, who is now three years old — Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is back to work.

Aishwarya-Rai-Bachchan

The actor, along with her co-stars Irrfanr Khan, Shabana Azmi and Anupam Kher, among others, will undergo an elaborate script-reading session for Sanjay Gupta’s next directorial venture.

An insider says, “The makers want the actors and other technicians to be comfortable with one another, and let them understand each other’s working styles before the film starts rolling. That’s why the entire primary, as well as secondary cast (of about 17-18 actors) plus the heads of the other departments of the movie, will be present at the script-reading session.”

Incidentally, the session was supposed to take place on January 9, but had to be delayed due to Irrfan’s ill health. “Yes, we would have done it on Friday, but Irrfan was bedridden, so we couldn’t. But now, we are set to go ahead today,” confirms Gupta, who will fine-tune the script with his team “to perfection” before the script-reading session begins today. Ask Gupta why he is holding such a session, which isn’t the norm in Bollywood, and he says, “Internationally, it’s the norm. It helps the cast bond with each other before the shooting starts. It’s a better arrangement than having the actors reach the sets and directly begin reading their lines in front of each other.”