‘I’ll get my snake along for the premiere’

The first time I was at the Cannes Film Festival four years ago, I went as Jackie Chan’s leading lady from The Myth so it was inevitable that I would get a lot of attention. But this time I had only a snake for company. Still, I caught their eye. The photograph of me with the snake around my neck has made it to the cover of Life magazine. It is among the 60 most iconic pictures shot at Cannes,” exults Mallika Sherawat.

The actor, who is back in Bollywood shooting for Indra Kumar’s Double Dhamaal, promises that the snake will be present at the premiere of Hissss too. “I got Jackie Chan down to India for the first time. Now, I’ll get my reptilian friend, along with my
director Jennifer Lynch. You can’t get more Hollywood than the Lynchs (Jennifer’s father is artist-filmmaker David Lynch),” she promises.

Sherawat’s first home production is targetting an October release. “We haven’t locked on the dates yet but it should be sometime in the second half of next month,” she says. And though it was an ordeal wearing a scaly body suit for hours –“I couldn’t eat or even drink water,” and have leeches crawling all over her, the actor insists that the effort was worth it.

“The director of photography of Titanic wrote to tell me that he loved what he’d seen of my film at Cannes. That’s great given that we’re not working with a multi-crore Hollywood budget,” she points out.

A hissstory is not uncommon to Hindi cinema, but Sherawat insists that hers is different. “For one, this naagin (snake) doesn’t sing or dance and she swallows her victims whole,” she laughs. “The response at Cannes was fantastic.”

While in Cannes, Sherawat was reportedly shunned by Bollywood beauties, Aishwarya Bachchan and Deepika Padukone, who refused photo-ops with her. But she was rubbing shoulders with Hollywood A-listers like Robert Downey Jr, Pierce Brosnan, Salma Hayek and even Johnny Depp.

Will she be in the next Pirates movies with Depp? “I’m hoping for that too,” Sherawat laughs. “Actually, we were all just hanging out and partying together at Cannes. Today, thanks to Twitter, everyone knows who’s doing and wearing what.”

True, but while a French poll voted her the Best Dressed Woman at the film festival, stylists back home ripped her apart. “The sensibilities are different, so I don’t take it personally. For me, Cannes was about representing India and Bollywood on foreign soil and I’m glad I made an impression with the stylish French,” she argues. “There will always be Mallika haters, but who cares. They are not laughing their way to the bank or walking the red carpet at Cannes, are they?”