Akshay Kumar has played a variety of roles in his career, and in his upcoming movie Thank You, the hot actor takes on a new avatar of an investigator and marital counselor named Kishan. On Friday, an exclusive event with Akshay took place in a hotel in London, and we were lucky enough to be there. Hosted by British journalist and news presenter Tasmin Lucia Khan, Akshay, in a unique twist to the press conference, revisited his role to give BollySpice and a selection of journalists his expert advice on relationships.
The actor started off the relaxed Q&A session by telling us a bit about his upcoming movie Thank You. He said that a male colleague from UTV, who was present in the room, watched the film on Thursday and was “very upset about the film”. Why? Because, it reveals the ‘inner secrets of men’, something that has not been done before in Hindi cinema. Akshay did point out that not all men are like the cheating characters in the film, which got the entire room laughing! He went on to say that “women are going to enjoy and love this film; you are going to take your husbands, boyfriends, brothers, everybody to watch this film.”
After that brief introduction we got down to the questions and it began with: “Why was it so compelling to show to women men’s secrets?” To this he answered, “I didn’t do this as in I had to “show”. I just heard one line of the script when I was shooting in Egypt for Singh is Kingg. Can you believe Anees (the director of Thank You) wrote the script in one night? He is a great writer and has made some amazing films, about 17 films, out of which 16 of them are hits. So, he came up with this idea and I quite liked it. I was like this is great – I am just going to do this. This is something that has never been revealed. We men have been hiding these things. So, let’s come out with it.”
After the first question Akshay decided to read some clever dialogues from the film that will leave audiences trying to figure out the meanings. One of the dialogues was “why do we hurt the most, the person who we love the most?” It baffled all of us and after unsuccessful attempts to find out the meaning, Akshay moved on to share his excitement about the film that will show the “real mirror of men!”
Another set of questions followed one after the other; “Thank You is a film about marriage so will it only appeal to the older audiences or married couples?” “No, it will appeal to everyone, even children can go and watch it!” Children? One of us then asked him, “You are training them young are you?” Akshay laughingly answered, “Believe me they are very trained!”
In answer to another query, Akshay aka Kishan clarified that lying is never acceptable in a relationship or marriage.
The conversation swiftly moved onto what qualities one should look for in a partner, to which Akshay replied, “Look for someone like me!” Of course, this resulted in many sighs from the females in the room. There is hope though because Akshay mentioned that he has plenty of friends just like him!
Another question was looking for a revealing answer: Would he be able to reflect or relate to any of the scenarios in Thank You with his own relationship with Twinkle, any little white lies he has been caught up on? “There was a time when I used to [tell white lies] before marriage in my relationship. Everyone does and I was also one of them.” Akshay stopped for a second and sweetly said, “But since I got married my wife is beautiful, she is lovely and I don’t need to lie. I don’t need to go anywhere else, as I am very happy with my wife and child. Since my son has come into my life, I don’t need to go anywhere else.” Akshay honestly told us how he was “looking forward to after the conference is over,” so he can spend time with his family who were waiting for him to get back. Seems he had “forgot[ten] about the conference” thinking it was tomorrow.
A fun question was put to the actor which once again had all the reporters laughing, “I have got a friend, who struggles to stay faithful in a relationship…” The question reminded Akshay of an incident that he swore was real and that had “actually happened” to a friend. “It was this guy’s birthday and his wife forgot to wish him in the morning, his children forgot, he went to work and no one wished him. It was only the secretary that wished him “happy birthday.” Seeing how sad her boss was, she suggested the two go and have lunch, but he said he would rather go for a drink where he got a little bit drunk. The secretary then invited her boss back to her house as she had, prepared a little bit of lunch. She asked her boss to sit down while she goes to put on something “comfortable”. So, the boss realised what was happening and started unbuttoning his shirt button and trousers. She opened the door to reveal his wife and children, all the people from work who were stood there to wish him happy birthday!” By this point we were all in hysterics and Akshay who was also laughing said it was the “worst thing” that had happened to his friend. One of the cool things is that throughout the questions Akshay made sure to interact with everyone and he wanted to know what we thought the wife should have done. We all agreed that she should have slapped him!!
After the funny story, Akshay soon got back on track and answered the question, “So what advice would you give to someone who keeps cheating and can’t stay faithful in a relationship?” “They don’t need advice, they need pity. You need to be faithful to your woman, your wife. They go through a lot in life and they need you all the time.” Akshay then went on to say that men need women. “We have to be faithful and if we cant then we should just kill ourselves!”
Tasmin wanted to know what Akshay thinks about changing partners to which he replied, “I do not need to go down that route as I have a lovely partner so I absolutely don’t think about it. It is just as simple as that!”
In addition to answering general questions about the film and relationships, an interesting debate took place between Akshay, Sunny, Shay Grewal and two single personalities who were all welcomed on stage. The lively and fun debate started of with the topic of why men cheat more than women, and went on to how to catch a cheating husband/wife, and are women/men more attractive when she/he is with someone?
One last question, “You have been married successfully, are in the industry and have a lot of attention thrown upon you. You don’t cheat but if there was any suspicion how would you convince your wife and make her trust you to that level?” Akshay answered very candidly saying, “When it started there was not that much trust. It’s always how you build it up, you do have to put some special effort and try and make them understand and believe it. If you cheat and in about 3-4 months you get caught, then in the same way if you don’t then as time passes by the women realise that you don’t do it.”
After being asked for some final words, Akshay, who mentioned that he does not like final words, showed us two trailers of the movie. The first was had been previously seen, but the second one premiered at the event.
After watching the exclusive preview of the film Thank You, I can see that this is a film that will get us talking about what men get up to for a long time but you will have to wait and watch to find out why when Thank You releases on the April 8, 2011.
Check out our exclusive pictures from the event!
Photo credit: Sunny Malik
