Nimrat: All the time! I am eating my cupcakes and he’s having a cucumber! (Laughs) Nimrat: I’m talking about you! He ate one cucumber… and he was like: ‘Oh my god, I have over-eaten!’ĭon’t you feel guilty eating with him around?
You think he ever has anything remotely like ghee and stuff?!Īkshay: Jhooth mat bol! Dopahar ko kya khaa ke aayi bataa… Nimrat: Oh right, just look at him (points towards AK’s lean frame). Nimrat: Eating each other’s head! (Laughs)Īkshay: Both of us love anything that’s dripping with ghee.
So what was it like on set? Sharing each other’s dabbas? Khao te galla karo! (Both Akshay and Nimrat laugh out loud) Before this, we didn’t know each other, actually… we had a chance meeting two years ago and then the first time we met after that was at the first reading of the (Airlift) script.Īkshay: Language and food… all Punjabis bond on these two things and that’s what we bonded on too. Nimrat: (Laughs) That was actually the real icebreaker… and then on, we got along like a house on fire. And both our characters (Ranjit and Amrita Katyal) are actual people who went through this… all the names in the film have been fictionalised, but the situations are all real.ĭid the two of you know each other from before or was the ice broken on set? We just heard you speaking to each other in Punjabi… And even if it did, it was a small mention on the sixth or seventh page. Nimrat: Only a handful of people were aware of this… it never came out in the newspapers. Read them… they are very interesting (smiles). I will forward you the links to some articles. ‘About 22,000 Indians were evacuated in the world’s largest airlift… never attempted by any country in the world’. It’s a film that needed to be made in these cynical times, especially where we tend to focus on what’s not going right… well here’s something that we can be really proud of and take inspiration from (smiles).Īkshay: Here, read what the Guinness (World Records) site says. You want to applaud every scene and every moment… it’s that kind of a film. Just two or three days ago, Akshay and I watched the film with the crew and the last 20 minutes literally give you goosebumps all through. Nimrat: Oh, all the time! There were those moments when I would step out of a scene and think about all those people who went through that ordeal in real. There are many shots in the teaser and trailer that give us goosebumps… was it the same for you too while shooting the film? I actually went back to check whether this genuinely happened and whether so many people had actually been airlifted… and I saw that every word written in that script was true. Nimrat: I consider myself as someone who is generally aware of things that happen, but I was really shocked to read the script. It’s been a tough task to make this film and that’s why we don’t mind even travelling to five cities a day to talk about Airlift! It’s an important film in my career… just for the fact that it tells such an effective and emotional story. It’s an entry in the Guinness World Records… an evacuation of such a scale hasn’t ever happened before or since. It was such an impossible kind of operation… so hush-hush… and yet India got together to ensure that we were able to bring back our citizens from war-torn Iraq. Then, it became a task to tell people: ‘Hey guys, take out your iPads and computers… type this in and see how it happened’…. Once I heard the story, I only wanted to make the film first. How important was it to make this story known to the world?Īkshay: When I first heard the story, I was completely shocked that I hadn’t ever heard of something as big and as history-altering as this. Nimrat: But honestly, I would rather have a day like this than a day where I have nothing to do… touchwood! And I am just loving this bit about going around the country and talking, especially when it comes to Airlift, because it’s a film that I am so proud of.Īirlift tells a true story, but not one that many people know about. So, as you can see, we’ve had an adventure-filled, travel-filled and action-packed day… which is what Airlift is, na? Usko kya kehte hain? (Pauses) Perfect brand fit! More power to our film! (Smiles)Īkshay Kumar: Actually, it would have been two cities - Kanpur and Calcutta - but we couldn’t land in Kanpur because of dense fog and so we had to land in Lucknow and motor it down to Kanpur which is roughly an hour-long drive (shakes his head and smiles). Nimrat Kaur: Come to think of it, that’s a really good way of putting it. (Both Akshay and Nimrat break into peals of laughter) Picture: Pabitra DasĬalcutta is your third stop of the day! Haven’t you taken the title of your film a little too seriously?! Akshay Kumar and Nimrat Kaur at Hyatt Regency on Thursday evening.