How Aaradhya Played a Role in Aishwarya Choosing ‘Maleficent’

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan will be seen, or should we say heard, for the first time as the mistress of evil in Maleficent. The actor gave her voice for the central character Maleficent in the Hindi version of the Disney film. Aishwarya steps in for Angelina Jolie, who has acted in the original version of the much awaited sequel, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.

Aishwarya, while speaking to The Quint, tells us the main reason for her to say yes to the film was the timing of the offer. She says, “Aaradhya and I watched Maleficent’s first part just three days before the email requesting me to dub for the the sequel came. Which was bizarre.”

I am sure you didn’t need much convincing when it came to saying ‘yes’ to ‘Maleficent’ because you have this Disney fan at home in Aaradhya.

Yes, actually the interesting part was that we had not seen Maleficent when it first came out. So it was really strange, some kind of divine timing. We had seen it just in the week of when I got approached for this. We had seen it like three days before. And we discovered Maleficent is Aurora’s God mother eventually. Maleficent had just endeared herself to us, and three days later I get this email and this request, and I was like ‘Am I seeing it right?’ And I said Maleficent aloud and Aaradhya was there with me and I was taking her to bed and I was setting the alarm for school wake-up. So I was setting that and I was like Maleficent? And I said it aloud. They are asking me... I said ‘No no wait wait I’ll address this later’ and she heard it and she is like ‘Mamma, Maleficent!’ I said, ‘It’s the voice-over it’s not the movie but it’s really strange.’ I said ‘We just saw it’ and she is like, ‘Yeah and we like her’ and I am like ‘Yeah, this is really bizarre, but maybe I’ll have a look at this later and see what exactly they are asking’. But it just made me smile. We watched it after all these years, we liked her and here was a call to be a part of it somehow. I think that kind of already made me inch towards a yes and I saw it the next day. Obviously, I told Disney I would love to see what’s expected of me and the character and discover this sequel to it, and I liked what I saw and yeah I was happy to be on board.

Does Aaradhya understand what’s dubbing?

Yes, because actually much earlier, one of the days I don’t know as usual, working mother. So one of those days when there was I think a quick dub for a commercial, it was a L’Oreal commercial I know because she laughed and we refer to dubbing as ‘Oh! The you are worth it?’ I am like ‘Yeah’. Because she had come with me to dubbing and I was doing ‘You are worth it, you are worth it’ in so many different ways and she was like ‘What is this?’ I was like ‘Shhhh... While I am doing this really quick. It’s a quick dub. She kind of had witnessed this experience couple of years ago but she remembers it and that was kind of cute. So I was like yeah, it’s a similar thing where you go... so she was like, ‘Oh! So you kind of say and sync it with the picture’. I was like, ‘Yeah, so that’s what I am going to be doing on this one in Hindi and it’s new to me as well.’ So she was familiar with what this would be as I think some kind of broad idea. How it has really broken down we haven’t intensely discussed but she was familiar with what dubbing is.

Disney’s Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil releases in theatres on 18 October in India, in English and Hindi.

Camera: Gautam Sharma
Editor: Veeru Krishan Mohan