Genelia D’Souza says directing films was always Riteish Deshmukh’s ‘dream’: ‘He selected my clothes, bindi, jewellery for Ved…’

Riteish, in a press conference following the trailer launch, spoke about the premise of his film and why he decided to take up directing this film. He said, “We’ve made it with lot of love, Ved is my first directorial. Ved means madness, pagalpan, passion. It is not a love triangle, but it has two love stories in two different life spans of Satya, the main character. One is when he meets a girl during his college days and the madness and passionate love in that phase of his life, the one where you think you can’t live without your beloved.”

He added, “How the girl goes away from his life, and then after twelve years, he gets married to Shravani (Genelia’s character), and the story is from her perspective, who knows that he was in love with someone else and never saw me in the same way, but she loves her. She brings him out of the darkness in his life. So the madness in the first half and the second half of the film are different and I think if there is no madness in life then there is no meaning in living it.”

About her experience of being directed by her husband, Genelia said, “I’m very happy because it was Riteish’s dream to direct films, and he never brought it out. I feel lockdown was the time when he decided that he wanted to get into this direction and he did it with all his heart and soul. So, whatever you see on the screen is Riteish Deshmukh, whether it was my clothes, to my bindi, to my jewellery, it was all selected by Riteish.”

Riteish also discussed his experience about directing senior acting Ashok Saraf in the film. He said, “It’s been 20 years, but i have never even got an opportunity to share a frame with him. I have grown up seeing his films, he is the superstar of the Marathi film industry. It was my wish, I wanted to ask him if he’ll star in my film. So I called him and told him that I’m directing a film so I wanted to narrate it to him, so he said, ‘oh you’re directing, then I’ll do it, no need for narration’. He has such a big heart, directing him was like a dream come true, and I am proud of it.” Ved is scheduled to release in theatres on December 30.”