When Rani Mukerji bonded with Rachel Griffiths, the actress from Hacksaw Ridge and Saving Mr Banks

Rani Mukerji was recently in the land down under for the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne where she won best actress for her role in Hichki. The actress spoke about inclusion and how Hichki talks about a topic that has never been discussed in Bollywood. Her speech on inclusion had an impact on a lot of people present there but it also impacted the Australian actor and director, Rachel Griffiths.

Griffiths, who is a prominent face in several Hollywood films like Hacksaw Ridge, Step Up, My Best Friend’s Wedding, was really moved by Rani’s outlook towards the theme of Inclusion. Having worked in a film that educated the masses on Tourette’s syndrome, Rachel was extremely impressed with Rani’s work graph. A source close to the actress said, “Rachel is a huge activist and was quite impressed with Hichki’s storyline and is really looking forward to watching it. And Rani was very interested in Rachel’s upcoming film Ride like a Girl, which she is directing. Rani is quite eager to watch it. Rani even asked Rachel to visit India to which Rachel replied that she was more than happy to and was planning to fly out to the country soon.”

We would love to watch these two in a film together!

Taapsee contributed the key word to the Bijlee Giregi song, which was an unplanned addition by Kashyap to the fantastic Manmarziyaan album

Taapsee Pannu’s Manmarziyaan has taken the internet and audiences by storm. It isn’t just because of Taapsee’s fantastic and feisty character in the film called Rumi, but also the music has been rocking charts since its release. With over 9 songs that have released, there is one that audiences absolutely love and that is Bijlee Giregi, the song that talks about Rumi’s character as honestly as possible.

There are two amazing back stories to this song that were recently discovered. Apparently, Anurag Kashyap decided to add this song to the film after they had completed half the shoot because he loved how Taapsee had depicted Rumi’s character and thought there should be a song dedicated to such a strong and powerful character. He sat down with the lyricist, Shellee and came up with the words of the song. The second story is while coming up with the lyrics, the director and lyricist knew they had to add ‘Laal Pari’ into the song. This term ‘Laal Pari’ was coined by Rumi aka Taapsee herself and the director knew it had to be part of the track because it gave it more depth.

When asked Taapsee about the term ‘Laal Pari’ and the addition to the song she said, “When I turned up shoot for Manmarziyaan in my red hair it was quite a look that everybody liked and was talking about on the set as well. And since the atmosphere was quite fun and quirky on the set all the time I knew someone will come up with a funny name for me seeing me in this red hair look so before anyone else could do that I coined this name for myself and we ended up using this name, Laal Pari, in the song as well as a scene in the film.”

Why Label People Fake If They Bake Their Face? Says Aashka Goradia

With a career spanning over 16 years & over 5000 episodes to her credit, Aashka carved a niche for herself on television with conventional & off beat roles alike.

Recently Aashka spoke on the prestigious Ted X platform about beauty, beautification and how in this day and age the trend is of embracing 'inner beauty' and the whole 'no filter' campaigns coming out by many brands.  But Aashka has boldly come out and asked a question we are sure many young girls and actress would want to ask.  Why call a girl who wants to bake her face as fake?  Why are we taking people's empowerment away from them?  Technology can help us with anything and everything today so then why are we saying we shouldn't look better as beautification has exited for over a thousand years. 

Aashka says, "Make up has existed for over 7000 years and lipsticks for over 5000 years.  Going back to humanity and the human race, we as people have always wanted to look better.  There has to be demand in order to be supply. The thousands of beauty applications wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the demand.  And so again if a girl chooses to get something done on her face, why do we call her 'plastic.'  So many of my own contemporaries including myself have gone through articles in the media where we've been said to 'have gone under the knife,' become 'plastic,' etc.  God forbid somebody has to go under the knife, do we even know what it is?  We jump to conclusions without doing proper research and understanding the process itself."

"And sadly the ones doing this are females as our industry is dominated by female journalists.  We've forgotten the power of the pen as we first upload before and after pictures calling someone plastic and then we ask the audience to leave comments below.  This fear of how you will be labeled has made many women lie or hide what they've exactly done instead of being able to come out and say, 'Yes I want to look better so I tried something out,' says the actress. 

Speaking about herself Aashka reveals, 'I've been around for 16 years and I of course can not look the same.  We are constantly aging and I wish I had a sob story to tell you but believe me there is none.  I wanted fuller lips and hence I decided to go for them.  But being asked about 'how much plastic went into my lips' at a press conference with 20 people around, is not the place I would like to speak about it and definitely not when the tone that the question came in to me was so wrong!  Yes I decided to do something on my face and that's my choice.  I am my own sculptor, I am my own painter!"

Pankaj Tripathi narrated ghost stories on the sets of Stree

Pankaj Tripathi who will soon be seen in the Rajkummar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor starring horror comedy, Stree, had a rather interesting pass time while he was shooting for the film.

For someone, who from the trailer, seems to have an affinity for all things paranormal in the film, which is based on the Kannada urban legend of Nale Ba, used to narrate ghost stories on set to pass the time in between takes. Gathering the cast and crew of eager listeners, the Masaan actor would delve into stories he heard from his childhood to entertain everybody on sets.

Pankaj “I've always loved listening to stories, especially the paranormal kind. The fun was how people said it and how everyone seemed to have one. My village in Gopalganj had so many stories like these that I had heard growing up. So on set it started as a joke where we one day decided to share ghost stories but soon it became a regular thing and all the ones I had heard in my childhood came in handy, as I had many stories to tell. The location made it even spookier.” Pankaj said of his innovative way of setting the mood just right for a horror comedy. 

Shah Rukh Khan is the reason Sacred Games star Elnaaz Norouzi came to India

Not many are aware that the Iranian-born Elnaaz Norouzi who shot to fame with the recent Netflix series Sacred Games, was actually charmed by Shah Rukh Khan's movies, which became the biggest reason for her to come to India. 

"Iranians love India and Bollywood. But as I grew up, my relationship with Bollywood became more and more special as my mom and I would watch at least one Bollywood film every week," quips Elnaaz. 

"We were crazy about those romantic Shah Rukh Khan films and I fell in love with SRK and wanted to work in Bollywood after that," she reminisces. "Even my dad is a big Bollywood fan, so watching Hindi films became a passion for me. I remember buying loads of Bollywood film DVDs and music albums in my childhood. I knew so many hit songs by heart, even without understanding the lyrics back then." 

Elnaaz's luck shone as she actually landed in India and also got to work with her idol Shah Rukh Khan in two ads -- one of Nerolac and the other of Fair and Handsome. "It was indeed a dream come true," beams the Sacred Games star. 

What's more! By now, the newbie has perfected her Hindi diction too. Elnaaz is proud that she dubbed all her dialogues in Sacred Games, where she featured along with established stars Saif Ali Khan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Radhika Apte. Directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, the series is based on Vikram Chandra’s critically-acclaimed novel by the same name. 

A month before the release of the first season of the series, Elnaaz also featured opposite Punjabi heartthrob singer-composer Guru Randhawa in the super successful music video of the single Made In India released by T-Series.