Kalki 2898 AD: Nag Ashwin finds it silly to direct Amitabh Bachchan and Kamal Haasan, says he didn’t weave his characters around Prabhas, Deepika Padukone’s stardom

Soon Priyanka Dutt chimed in, “He definitely likes perfection to whatever level he can until the actor is like really tired and tells, ‘Listen this is all I can do.'”

Speaking about how it was to direct Amitabh Bachchan and Kamal Haasan, Nag Ashwin said, “I have no idea how to deal with Amitabh Bachchan and Kamal Haasan. I always found it very silly to try and tell them something about their acting or performance. Especially to Mr Bachchan. I started my journey with him for this film. The very first day of shoot was with him. And I was just clueless. I think it had been a longtime since I shot anything, it had been around two years and then the first person I had to direct was Amitabh Bachchan. I was like, ‘What am I gonna say?’ Maybe, ‘Sir, a little slower?’ It sounded silly.”

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He added, “But, what I realised down the lane with all of them was that they want to be part of the process, they want to be directed. They want to think they know what they are doing. The bigger they are, the more they want to be told what to do, like Bachchan sir and Kamal sir, they are even more open to being directed. They didn’t want to do what they have done before. They were like don’t make me Mr Bachchan or Mr Kamal Haasan, I don’t want to do that.”

Nag Ashwin was also asked if he cast Prabhas and Deepika Padukone because of their stardom and wrote characters around it. To this, the director had a very unique reply.

Ashwin said, “To be honest, when you write a character, it’s still a character, the human part comes only after we cast actors. Till then, it’s just an idea on paper. For example, if I am saying Bhairava says a certain thing, it’s just his personality that’s speaking. Same happened with Bujji, it was just a character until we thought of it as an AI. He was supposed to be Bhairava’s buddy.”

“I think I am sort of oblivious to a few things which is good. I was fully aware of their stardom, what they have done and how much they are loved and I am definitely aware of the kind of reaction an actor will get in a particular scene but I am also aware of the fact that if we will try to bring these things on purpose, it will fail. So whenever Bhairava works on the paper, I know he will work on the screen and the audience. In reverse engineering, it always feels flat,” added the director.

Kalki 2898 AD, reportedly made on a budget of ₹600 crore, will release in multiple languages.