Fourth Film For Aishwarya With Mani Ratnam Is Her Biggest Challenge

No power on  earth  could  persuade Aishwarya  to play a negative  role.Except Mani Ratnam.

Though there  has been no  official announcement on it,  Mani Ratnam and his favourite  actress  Aishwarya  RaiBachchan—they’ve early collaborated on  Iruvur, Guru and Raavan—  are definitely  coming together for  the  fourth time for a  film called Ponniyin Selvan,inTamil,  and  this time she’s playing an  out-and-out antagonist.

Though not allowed to talk about it, a source close to Aishwarya reveals  how reluctant  she was to go grey, “It isn’t even grey. It’s  an  out-and-out black character.Aishwarya was  not inclined to do a negative part  at  this  stage  of her career at all.  She  believes, and perhaps  rightly so, that as an iconic  actress she has an example  to set to her fans. In a country besieged with crimes  she  doesn’t want to  glorify  negativity  by playing a negative character.”

However  it was Mani Ratnam who convinced her about the character and her  need to  play it.

“Aishwarya  flew down  to Chennai  to meet her second-favourite director(after Sanjay Leela Bhansali). He sat her down , narrated  the whole script and explained why as an actor she must do this. To her  misgivings about what her daughter Aaradhya  would  think of  her Mama playing a ‘bad woman’  Mani  assured Aishwarya that  Aaradhyawould be  proud  of her mother when she was old  enough to  understand  what acting is all about,” says  the source.

 Apparently this is all the  convincing that Aishwarya needed .

In an  earlier   conversation Aishwarya had said  to me. “There are two filmmakers I can  never say no to.Sanjay(Bhansali) and Mani Sir.I started my career with Mani’s Iruvar where I had  to play a  complex  character  of  a politician and speak in  Tamil. I knew nothing about either(politics or the Tamil  language). But he had  faith in me.That’s  what  gave me the courage to go  for it