“THE MOST WONDERFUL PART ABOUT OUR MARRIED LIFE IS THAT SHE HAS MADE IT SO SEAMLESS THAT I DON’T FEEL ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL. I GET TO LIVE WITH MY BEST FRIEND, AND THE CREDIT FOR THAT GOES ENTIRELY TO HER”
– ABHISHEK

“HE IS EVERYTHING I WANTED HIM TO BE APND MORE”
– ASH


“Abhishek and Aishwarya fight in the hotel lobby,” screams a headline telling
a tale of trouble in paradise. “Aishwarya giggles while co-star Priyanka makes her moves on stage during a star studded show,” says another exposé in print. “Bachchans have completely alienated themselves from the industry and the three of them are functioning as a unit,” is yet another not so positive observation.

Abhishek and Aishwarya were miles away from the headlines that they had made. Recovering from a bout of German measles, Aishwarya’s aquamarine eyes that had launched a million products, were red. Abhishek was dressed in Indo-western, which is apparently his favourite wear off late.

There are a million trivia questions running through my mind as I watch them exchange a private look as I sink into the chair opposite them. Does Ash cook at home? “No she just does not have the time.” What did Abhi give Ash for their first anniversary, “A vacation”.

And even though they sounded like most normal couples, nothing could take away from the fact that they were the It couple, and the millions that ride on them can never be forgotten as also the sharp look that Ash gave Abhi as he dug into a cookie and then kept it back as it did not meet the biwi’s approval. If that is not love, what is? Here is speaking business with the couple that I’d rather only hear coo-talk from…

SD: This is your first tour as husband and wife, is it going to be work or recreation?

Abhi (Abhishek Bachchan): It is going to be enjoyable work.

Ash (Aishwarya Bachchan): Ya, Abhishek has put that in perspective. Individually you’ve known us all. And I am talking about our family. Pa is very committed and passionate about his work. We have put up a good show and connected with the audience. We have all said that we love to bond together and after very long we are getting an opportunity to spend these 6 weeks together after ‘Sarkar Raj’. And Abhishek and I have obviously had a blast as a couple.

SD: Why do Abhi-Ash choose to be so cut off from the world. Is it just the first flush of marriage or something else that does not allow you guys to mix with the industry, which you are a part of?

AB: We have been outdoors, I completely refute the allegation. After shooting ‘Sarkar Raj’, Ash went to America to shoot ‘Pink Panther’ for two months, and of course she was also completing ‘Jodhaa Akbar’ immediately after marriage. I had gone to shoot ‘Drona’ and then I was in Miami for ‘Dostana’ where she joined me. We have been so busy working independently so it is not as if we have become an island or something.

Ash: It was a personal loss that occurred end of last year, beginning of this year we lost dadi maa. The family was in mourning. Everyone has on record everything that has happened but suddenly everyone has chosen to take this overflow unnecessarily.

I had taken time out from filming to be with Abhishek but that was because when we got married I had gone straight to work and we didn’t really get to spend any time as a couple. Apart from all other commitments we have been productively spending time working.

SD: ‘Sarkar Raj’ is considered to be one of your best performances. Did Abhishek or the marriage inspire you to perform or is it that his company just brings it out of you?

Ash: Very tricky when you say things like these because you kind of wonder how to answer it, very honestly…

Abhi: (cuts in) I think her best performance to date has been in ‘Guru’ and that is before we got married. Similarly I think ‘Provoked’ was another very very powerful performance of hers. The kind of performances she has given over the past three four years has been outstanding.

The maturity and the versatility she’s shown has been great. I mean for an actor to start one year with ‘Provoked’, do an ‘Umrao Jaan’, then do a ‘Dhoom 2’ and then do a ‘Guru’. I don’t know of any other actress who’s managed to pull off something like that. Her versatility speaks volumes and I do think ‘Sarkar Raj’ was one of her better performances not merely because of the work she did, which was wonderful, but to be in a film like that, which is a guy’s film, and to be a woman and still be able to stand out and hold your ground without shouting from the rooftops is very commendable.

I don’t know actresses who’d do that, I don’t know any male actor who’d do that. For example in ‘Guru’ I had the title role, my character was an author backed role but I feel her performance was far superior to anyone else in the film (Ash: Awwww) because when you have no framework to work within, that’s when your talent truly comes in.

I basically did what Mani asked me to do, all of it was written there for me to pick up, she had to create. So yes, I don’t think it’s something that has happened post marriage. She is definitely one of the most talented actresses we have today and her popularity proves that. She’ll obviously deny all this as soon as I finish saying this (laughs).

Yes as the husband and the member of the family we’d like to believe that we help bring out the best in each other (laughs). The last time the three of us worked together in a sense made history with Kajra re; though she had agreed to be part of ‘Bunty Aur Babli’ before marriage. I thought it was very interesting that when the whole world expected us to be paired in a romantic film and we managed to pull off a film like ‘Sarkar Raj’.

I get tonnes of emails from a lot of fans who appreciate that we didn’t come as a romantic couple in ‘Sarkar Raj’. So I don’t think it’s something that’s newly found in her. We hope that as a family we continue to inspire her to continue her great work. But she has already been doing it for a long long time.


Ash: I’m very thankful to er…(Abhi, to me: Laughter) to all the directors also who have given me the opportunity to learn along the way. I always say experience is the biggest teacher, I firmly believe in that because that has been my only school since I haven’t had any other formal training. You get the opportunity to work with directors who have the faith to keep offering you different roles, given the parameters what’s offered to a leading lady.

To be very honest I don’t read a lot of papers or magazines because I know it reaches you anyways but the messages and SMSs I have received over the last couple of years from film to film have been very exhilarating and wonderful. They are very reassuring that the choices I am making and the kind of experiences I am looking forward to as an actor is being recognized and appreciated.

SD: And that feels good.

Ash: Yes the last few films Abhi mentioned and continuing into ‘Jodhaa Akbar’ and ‘Sarkar Raj’, all these films have evoked similar responses that this has been my best work and as a student of cinema you feel that you are putting out that work. And as far as belonging to the family, yes we are a family. But professionally when I get to work as co-star with Abhi, or Amitji and I am not talking in terms of husband or father-in-law, any actor will say that you are working with a colleague who brings so much to the table, it contributes and you come away learning so much.

And I’ve worked with Abhishek in so many films and each time it’s been a pleasure working with him, and I am not saying this as a wife. At the end of the day he can say listen I want to play safe, I want to be this glamorous current star, please give me the most popular music, I want to rock the charts, I have to look cool, I have to look young.

He can easily chart this course and be just called the next big thing but what I love about the way he has worked is that, he has made these diverse choices. ‘Guru’ being a glaring example of willing to put on weight like that, to actually traverse what the director’s ambition is to see this actor aging the way he did, to work on the partial paralysis the character experiences.

It speaks a lot for the actor and his commitment. A lot of people don’t even know this but he actually shaved off a bit of his hair to give the impression of a receding hairline. And he was working simultaneously for ‘Dhoom 2’ and he made sure he didn’t short change either of the films. That takes a lot because prosthetics could have been an easy way out but he just did it because he said the director has a conviction, so I am going with it. And he’s done that over and over.

Take for example ‘Sarkar Raj’. He didn’t say, ‘it was a sequel, you are going to bump me off? Wait a minute, I won’t be there in the third part’, I mean he’s not even going into all that. He goes with the conviction of the director and I love that. In my own way probably that’s been my approach as well, but Pa is legendary, he’s an institution and it’s just wonderful working together.

SD: When you do these deglamorized roles, is it a conscious effort to underplay your beauty?

Ash: My first film ‘Iruvar’ actually has me playing a deglamorized character. And if you date it back to ‘Choker Bali’ and then post ‘Devdas’ I have done so many movies. But I always felt that people tend to identify lesser physical make-up as deglamorized and more make-up as glamorous. Whereas that has not been my approach at all.

It has always been, work on the character the way you envision it, but never forget that you also have to bring to life what the director has envisioned. It’s a collaborative effort. That’s when you see a film where you feel everything fell in sync. So it’s not about deglamourized or glamorized, it’s about creating a character that when you see it on a poster it’s identifiable with the movie.

That’s been my approach since a very long time. It’s just not the face of Aishwarya because you keep wondering you are playing so many different types of Indian characters and think how to play one different than the other, because it’s the same face but a different person. Every actor who’s interested in working with the director to create that character does it.

SD:Abhishek do you think the myth of female following decreasing after marriage
is true?

Ash: You should have been there at the premieres of these films. You should have seen the screams and the hollers and then you’d have known. Ask me, I’m the wife I know.

Abhi: Post my marriage there was ‘Sarkar Raj’ and then there was this film that I did a brief appearance in, ‘Shootout At Lokhandwala’, and another brief appearance for my friend Adi in ‘Laaga Chunari Mein Daag’, Then I have ‘Drona’ coming up, then ‘Dostana’ and then ‘Delhi 6’.

The criteria is not that you choose films that win you adulation. It’s about fulfilling your creative need, it’s about being inspired to do a film. And a film if made well will appeal. You can never tell what kind of a film will definitely get you a certain kind of an audience. You have to make a film as sincerely and as honestly as possible and that is what will appeal to the audience.

Ash: There is something very wise I learned very early in my career. I was told to concentrate on my craft, the career will happen. And that’s pretty much the approach every member of our family has had for sure. Enjoy doing what you are doing.

SD: Ash, how differently is married life treating you? For most women it changes but remains the same for a man traditionally speaking. How different it’s been besides the fact that you have someone to take care of now?

Abhi: I think that’s the most wonderful part about our married life that she has made it so seamless that I don’t’ feel any difference at all. I get to live with my best friend, and the credit for that goes entirely to her. I am sure men are very difficult to live with. (giggles) We have very different ways of doing things, which is a complete opposite of how women do it. (more giggles) But she’s fit in so beautifully and seamlessly that she has not allowed me to feel that there has been any difference.

SD: Is it one moment that makes one realize that your work buddy becomes your soulmate? Is it one moment that makes you feel everything’s changed?

Abhi: It’s always a process, I don’t think it hits you like a ton of bricks. The process was that we were colleagues first, we were friendly at first then we became friends, and then finally came together. That was a process in itself. It was a wonderful and a memorable process.

Ash: We’ve had so much experience in the past. We have so much to look back at all the memories along the journey. It’s not just been one fine day thing; it’s really been a journey.

Abhishek, you had mentioned in some press conference that you are happy having one pack instead of six. But in ‘Drona’ you play a super hero, doesn’t that superhero require the archetypal toned and worked up male physique?

Abhi: An actor must always be presentable. I don’t think anyone wants to go out and see a hero who’s out of shape and not well presented. Having said that I think it is a higher duty of an actor to look his character. I don’t think audience would have liked ‘Guru’ that much had he to have a six pack and long flowing hair.

More important to be the character. Coming to ‘Drona’, Drona is not a super hero, it’s a fantasy. It is a very physical film. It has a lot of action which we paid a lot of attention to. So it depends from film to film.

Ash: Just adding to that, I think it’s wonderful for an actor that in addition to being screamed ‘Abhishek’ by the fans, there are also people screaming Bluffmaster, Sarkar, Bunty, Gurubhai so many men saying that. It’s superb that a connection has been made with the audience with the characters you play that they call you also by your character names.

It means you’ve made an impression. It’s wonderful that it has gone beyond ‘Abhishek’ screams. You are carving characters which people retain as identities and so many various ones, I think it’s fabulous. I really enjoy that and it makes me very proud when I see that happening.

SD: Have there been any surprises post marriage, anything about her personality you didn’t know earlier?

Abhi: No. She is everything that I expected her to be and a lot more.
Ash: Likewise. As I had said earlier we have connected over time and experiences with each other so it’s been like you already knew each other and that’s the comfort factor. He is everything I wanted him to be and more. Then again life is beautiful, it’s also about growing together and discovering each other.

SD: Will we be seeing you in a romantic film?

Abhi: Yes in Mani Ratnam’s film.

Ash: Oh that won’t require much acting then (giggles).

SD: The shows that you are a part of currently, is it a show of strength of Brand Bachchan?

Abhi: It’s not about a show of strength; it’s not about a brand. It’s about going out there and connecting with the people. That is the prime focus of these shows. It’s not to prove a point to anyone.


Ash: And we have not clearly labeled it or titled it that way. Brand Bachchan is a phrase that has gotten coined somewhere along the way in the writ word; but we are from the beginning reiterating and Pa has been vociferously saying that this is not about it being with just the family, we are going with a huge troupe of colleagues and putting on an all encompassing show.

Yes you can never take away the fact that it’s Mr. Bachchan out there and he’s a living legend, so yes he will be hugely impactful irrespective of how much he is there in the show or in the press conferences he attends. There could be fifty of us standing there on the stage but you can invariably see and will feel his presence the strongest and the maximum and he genuinely is deserving of that.

He has gotten a phenomenal library of films to show for. That is something you can’t take away from the Bachchans but because of that it can’t necessarily be coined or labeled as an exercise to put forth the brand Bachchan so to speak.

SD:The people you have chosen to take on this tour, are they also the people you are friendly with or you formed the entourage based on what you thought would put out a good show irrespective of their equations with you?

Abhi: Yes, Riteish, Preity, Madhuriji, Vishal-Shekhar, Akshay are people we are extremely fond of, have immense respect for. It’s a mixture of people who are friends and other people who we thought would be ideal for the world tour.

SD: There are these rumors that you were laughing at Priyanka’s performance at the IIFA. How true is that?

Abhi: I think it’s very ridiculous and petty of people to write stuff like this. We are one couple I think who have great admiration for our colleagues, they are all our friends. Apart from the fact that it’s ill-mannered to laugh at someone on stage, which is something we would never ever do, I think it’s in very bad taste to write something like this. There was some report at another press conference that we had a showdown in the lobby.

They really have to have very fertile imagination to make that up, I mean if you have nothing to write, don’t try to make up things. I think it’s very unfair, because they are tearing apart the very fabric of this film industry. We are all very integrated, we are all every close. We might not be sitting on each other’s laps but it’s a big fraternity.

And by writing stuff like that these people are trying to create a wedge in relationships, which have taken years to nurture, with people we work with on a daily basis. We have a lot of respect for all our colleagues. And our upbringing and behaviour would never allow us to do something like that. It’s very unfortunate that it happens and we don’t get enough opportunities like these to say something about it.

Ash: There are too many false stories, and we can’t keep up. One day there will be a story and there will be a clarification and the next day there will be another story followed by another clarification. There are just so many false stories and they all came back to back. There was a ridiculous one with me demanding a pair of glares that cost ten lakhs.

I have never heard something more far fetched. If the intention is to get a clarification just get a quote from the designer or the producer. But that effort does not seem to be happening with these people. There was a silly story about him supposedly slapping a spot boy, find that spot boy and get a quote if you are looking for a clarification.

There’s a story about us having a fight and some security guards having reported it, it’s not validated with any kind of actual presence. Many times we just wonder where do the actors have time to have problems with each other. Everyone is just so busy working. Events like award functions, tours are the few opportunities where we meet our colleagues abroad and get a chance to connect and bond with them, we interact with them a little more, spend a little time with each other, have a few laughs, relax and have a good time.

At premieres or socials we barely manage to exchange ‘hi’s’ or ‘how have you beens’? But somehow visuals get pulled out of context and get used to validate such stories, its very unfortunate. And there is nothing we can do about this. And like Abhi said it shouldn’t tear from the fabric of our endeavour to remain connected as a fraternity. That discomfort should not be brought in.

That need for clarification amongst us should not be unnecessarily driven in by irresponsible, completely wrong reporting if I may say so. It’s totally unwarranted. I remember after we got married I thought things would settle down with such stories but Abhi said the drama has just started. Just be a matter of time when there will be stories about fights and what not.

And when this story actually came out about us having a fight I was like, ‘what? already?’, it’s only been a little over a year since we married. And you wonder what next, there will be more about God forbid, discord, us having affairs. Even Aamir was asked the other day about him and his marriage. I think things have become just a bit predictable now and it’s unfortunate and its unwarranted is all I can say.