The Pacification of Priyanka

The Pacification of Priyanka • Aamir to Travel Time • Ripe for Gossip

Ranveer Singh and his Gunday co-star Priyanka Chopra may put on smiling faces and insist they’re thick friends as they do the rounds of television studios promoting their new film leading up to its release next Friday. But the pair reportedly got off to a rocky start when they began filming last year.

Turns out Ranveer—who describes himself as a method actor—was channelling his inner wolf for a scene that required him to rough up Priyanka on her first day on set. The actor apparently got so caught up in the moment that he didn’t realise he had bruised his leading lady all over her arm while manhandling her for the required scene. A visibly shaken Priyanka, who barely knew Ranveer until then, is believed to have complained about his ‘behaviour’ to the director, and even threatened to leave the film if things were going to continue in this vein.

The next morning, unit hands noticed Ranveer was in full ‘damage control’ mode, apologising profusely to Priyanka for his sudden lapse of judgment, and even bringing her a rose and a glass of juice to appease her.

Sources from the set say the pair had no further clashes during filming, but that Arjun Kapoor, the second leading man in the film, was also quickly informed of the incident and warned to be at his best behaviour. Arjun, however, having known Priyanka since his days as an assistant director on Salaam-e-Ishq, in which she starred, had no such teething troubles with his leading lady.

The buzz doing the rounds in film circles is that Aamir Khan has found his next film project. The actor, who delivered another blockbuster in Dhoom 3 recently, has already begun filming the second season of his television show Satyamev Jayate. He’s also wrapped principal photography on Rajkumar Hirani’s P.K., which is slated to release around Christmas time this year. Those in the know say he’d been meeting writers and directors for the past few months, listening to scripts and weighing offers. After considerable deliberation on his part, it seems Aamir has said ‘yes’ to a time-travel drama to be produced by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s Excel Entertainment. The film will be directed by first-timer Nithya Anand, and will likely go on the floors later this year.

It’s interesting to note that Aamir’s fascination for time- travel themes hasn’t diminished over the years. Few are likely to know that Aamir had signed a sci-fi film in the 1990s titled Time Machine that was shelved soon after the first schedule had been completed. The film starred Raveena Tandon opposite Aamir, and also featured Naseeruddin Shah and Rekha, and was being directed by Shekhar Kapur. Apparently the film’s producers could never get along with Kapur, and were concerned about the inflating budget of the picture, therefore pulled the plug on the movie before it could completely bankrupt them.

Everyone from the office boys to the big bosses at a reputed production company were a little bit surprised last week by the poor manners of the leading lady of their latest film. The actress, who plays the titular role in this forthcoming movie, had dropped in at the company’s suburban office for a meeting with the marketing department to discuss promotional strategy and marketing plans for the film, which is only a few weeks away from release now.

As is protocol, the actress’ staff was asked in advance what she might like to eat or drink while she was at the office. “Fruits,” they’d been told. Dutifully, a variety of fresh fruit had been procured and laid out for the actress in the conference room where the meeting was to take place. Oddly, she seemed uninterested in the fruit and focused specifically on the job at hand when the meeting began, leaving the fruit untouched in the end.

When the conference room emptied after the meeting had come to an end, staffers swear that the actress’ spot-boy returned to the now vacant room, gathered all the fruit that had been laid out for her, packed it up, and proceeded to join the actress and the rest of her staff as they made their way out of the building. It was clear he had been acting on her instructions.

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Rajeev Masand

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