When the teaser of Mohit Suri’s romantic drama Saiyaara released last month, fans of his 2013 blockbuster Aashiqui began comparing both the films, and their protagonists played by debutant Ahaan Panday and Aditya Roy Kapur respectively. Yash Raj Films dropped the Saiyaara trailer on Tuesday, which gave fans more insight into the former.
Ahaan’s character Krish Kapoor is up and coming, and more charged up and aggressive than Kapur’s morose, has-been avatar in Aashiqui 2. The trailer starts with Ahaan beating up a music authority and saying, “Your job is to review real artists. If these blue-tick celebrities even sneeze, you’d say, ‘Wow, they sneeze so melodiously. And when a real artiste puts their soul on the line? What do they get?”
Ahaan, who is a cousin of actor Ananya Panday and brother of popular blue-tick social media influencer Alanna Panday, makes his debut with Saiyaara. “Krish Kapoor. Don’t ever forget this name. Say the name!” he announces in the trailer, shouting at the music official he’s just beaten up mercilessly.
Enter: Aneet Padda. She plays Vaani, a writer/lyricist who’s warned after entering the music scene that she’d have to tolerate egos and tantrums more than manage talent in the industry. “I just want to write, ma’am,” she says innocently. When she collaborates with Krish to write his new song, she explicitly puts down her conditions — no late nights, no passive smoking, and no abuses, much to the disappointment of Krish.
We then see montages of them falling in love across the city and an island, glimpses of which we’ve witnessed in the teaser and songs released so far. Then we reach a point when Vaani askss a moist-eyed Krish to leave, threatening him with a knife. The heartbroken singer then achieves superstardom with his grand live performances. A well-wisher warns him, “In the name of love, don’t ruin yourself.”
Mohit Suri said in a statement he is humbled with the love the film is getting because at one point, he “had given up on the idea of making Saiyaara with newcomers” because he “didn’t come across debutants with acting calibre.” The ace director is happy that he found Ahaan and Aneet, who lived up to his expectations.
“I wouldn’t have made Saiyaara if I hadn’t found formidable actors like Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda. I was honestly thinking about making something else before my path crossed with Yash Raj Films that was looking for a young love story and was grooming Ahaan and Aneet to star in such a film,” said Mohit.
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“No one expects newcomers to have Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt level of acting but they need to be actors who hold their own on screen,” he said, adding, “Somehow, the writing process of Saiyaara took time and I met YRF and then I saw the auditions of Ahaan and Aneet and decided to spend time with them to get convinced about their acting, intellectual and emotional depth.” Saiyaara is slated to release in cinemas on July 18.
