Looking sexy is hard work: Prithviraj

As south star Prithviraj found out; in a role reversal in Aiyya, he plays the man who Rani Mukerji’s character is in lust with.

Over the years, Bollywood audiences have been used to seeing women portrayed as the object of desire, playing the romantic interest to the central male lead. A female actor’s stereotypical role is to be desirable not just for the hero, but also for the audience. But a role reversal in Anurag Kashyap’s upcoming production(in association wih Viacom 18), Aiyya, will see south film star Prithviraj playing the male object of desire to Rani Mukerji’s character.

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Ask Prithviraj about the experience, and he says that it wasn’t easy at all."The brief given to me by Sachin Kundalkar (director of the film) was that I needed to look like a sexually-desirable object. I don’t know if I that’s how I end up looking in the film eventually, but one thing’s for sure — in my 80-odd-film career, I’ve never had to train so hard for any role," he says.

Aiyya is a woman-centric film based on the idea of gender role reversal. So Sachin’s advice to Prithviraj was pretty straightforward — he needed to look as hot as possible. “I wanted to imagine a man from a woman’s point of view. As a result, I required the character to have a certain amount of sensuousness. So I asked him to look hot,” says Sachin.

Sachin is also all praise for Rani. He says, “Rani is completely a director’s actor. She absorbed the importance of the script in no time. We were on the same page right from day one,” says Sachin.