'There's a reason we salute Mani Ratnam and directors like him'

On Thursday, Aishwarya Rai grabbed attention as she walked the red carpet for the first time at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. She wore a larger-than-life silver and grey gown. Before making her debut at Cannes 2023, the actor sat down for an interview on the sidelines of the prestigious festival, where she has been a regular for decades. She was dressed in a shiny green dress.

In the interview, Aishwarya spoke about her last release, ‘Ponniyin Selvan: II (PS2)’, her roles in the film (Aishwarya played dual roles as Nandini and her mute mother Mandakini Devi) and the ‘silent question’ everyone keeps asking about her career.

Aishwarya was asked during her interview with a leading media house: “Why aren’t we, as in Hindi cinema, offering you roles with such complexities and such depth? Look at what you brought out and what you did with it (her roles in ‘PS2’)?”

In response, the actor said, "Well, that’s a silent question I think everybody normally ends up asking. We are all creative people. When something turns out so good and feels so right, both creatively for the people working on it and for the audience, that’s the response it evokes. I think one of the most beautiful and most rewarding moments is when questions like these arise for the actors and the leading ladies.”

Aishwarya further talked about ‘PS2’: “There’s a reason we salute Mani Ratnam and directors like him, who do creative work like this and that’s why it is such a pleasure for us as artistes to work with them and to come away with results like this and movies like this, where we are proud of the work we have done. We feel immensely satisfied and ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ has definitely been immensely satisfying for all of us.”

‘Ponniyin Selvan II’ is the second instalment of the period drama based on Kalki Krishnamurthy’s popular historical novel ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ (‘The Son of Ponni’)