Abhishek Bachchan Reveals Aishwarya Rai’s Creative Fix For His Fat Suit On ‘Guru’ set

During a recent conversation, Abhishek Bachchan mentioned that his wife Aishwarya Rai had to stitch a fat suit for him for Mani Ratnam’s Guru. Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai co-starred in Mani Ratnam’s 2007 film Guru. The actor most recently related a fascinating story about how, after the director chose to shoot a song out of the blue, his now-wife sewed him a gigantic, fat outfit.

During a recent session at G5A Cinema House’s Mani Ratnam retrospective, Abhishek Bachchan told an intriguing anecdote about working with Mani Ratnam on Guru. He recalled that the filmmaker approached him while they were staying in a guest house during the shoot and asked to practise with choreographer Brinda Gopal.

In response, the actor recalled bringing up the fact that they were meant to film Gurukant Desai’s younger self rather than the song. However, Bachchan observed the choreographer confused when he went down and realised that the director had thrown one of his “googlies.”

The actor revealed that the rough version of the song Ek Lo Ek Muft, which was composed by AR Rahman and sung by Bappi Lahiri, had arrived that morning. He referred to it as a “click track” for filming, since it lacked the whole music.

“He had previously given me two months to gain weight. That night, I still remember that Ameira (costume designer Ameira Punvani) and Aishwarya made a fat suit for me by stitching kambals (blankets) together. Then they took some shady gray stuff and put it on my hair. He (Mani) was like, ‘shave your head.’ I said, ‘But we are still shooting the younger portions.’ Amid all this, I was performing to a click track,” recalled Abhishek.

He humorously further added that by the time they were ready to shoot the part of the song featuring Aishwarya Rai’s dance sequence, Rahman had finalized and sent the complete track. “Then she started dancing, and I was standing there thinking, ‘What is happening?!’,” he says.

Abhishek Bachchan went on to recall shooting in extreme conditions, including Mani Ratnam forcing him to wear a fat suit in 60-degree Celsius heat. “It was summer, and we were shooting in stone caves. In that song, you can actually see the rubber from some of the dancers’ shoes melting onto the stones,” he stated.