Won’t trust anyone with my kids: Kajol

That Kajol is a good actress is huge understatement. She is definitely among the best we ever had; and also a rare actress who managed to pull films completely on her own shoulders. And almost a decade post her marriage and mothering a growing up kid the actress still manages to catch the audience’s attention and get them to the theatres. All of it on the strength of her performance! In fact talk to her about being capable of commanding an audience despite being married and she snaps back, “Does marriage make me unwatchable?”

Her first reply indicates she is very much the person we have seen her enacting so often on screen – lively, impromptu and fun. And the bit of apprehension that we had before meeting her drops and disappears. Of course we got to talk about her latest film We Are Family, which is what the interview is supposed to be, but you really can’t blame us for digressing considering we don’t get to meet her too often. To top it, she is pregnant for the second time and is expecting her baby in a month. And if her daughter Nysa’s wishes are to be fulfilled she could very well have another daughter. “Nysa has seven cousins and there are just three girls in the family. So when she got to know that I am pregnant she said I better get her a baby sister so that the ratio of boys to girls gets better!” laughs Kajol.

While she is not really in a position to ensure that Nysa’s wish is fulfilled she admits that she is very well the best person to bring up her children. “I would never trust anyone else with my children. No one else can bring up better than me!” declares the now part-time actress. Part-time because she tends to get “lazy” and work while she wants and star happier with her kid at home.

Kajol was seen in My Name is Khan earlier this year and now will be seen in We Are Family. Interestingly while she loses her child in MNIK, in WAF her children loose her to cancer. We Are Family happens to be an official remake of 1998 Hollywood hit Stepmom starring Julia Robert and Susan Sarandon. Both MNIK and WAF are produced under Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions banner. And it won’t be wrong to assume that Karan was one major reason she agreed to do WAF in first place. Kajol admits she loved the script when Siddharth Malhotra took it to her but she was not willing to do the film as she wanted to take time off post MNIK. “But he (Siddharth) kept insisting and finally I agreed,” she says.

And halfway through the film’s shoot the actress realized she is pregnant. “Actually I completed almost the whole of the film. And then we had to shoot that dance number. There were a lot of things like jumping from the piano and jumping here and there. There was not a single shot that looked like I could have managed. I told Karan what all I can do and he got adjustments made. I even gave him option to shoot the song completely without me but he said he wanted me in the song as the script needed it,” she narrates.

And now that the film is up for release Kajol says she is too excited to see it release and audience reacting to her character. Kajol will be seen playing first wife to Arjun Rampal but they break up. She plays the character originally essayed by Susan Sarandon in Stepmom. “You know I don’t really like the idea of remakes. I feel we should not try recreating the same magic. But when I read the script of We Are Family I realized that this has been Indianised and written really well ,” she says and to help her performance the actress informs she didn’t watch the original before she started shooting. While her fans will be waiting for another magical touch, we will just hope WAF lives up to the promise.

And even as the film releases Kajol goes back to her cocoon. Promising that she will not retire from the screen, she takes leave for a few years till her second child is old enough for her to be able to leave the little one alone with someone else. The next innings awaits!

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