N Mahalakshmi in conversation with Alia Bhatt - Outlook Business | WOW 2019 Mumbai
Watch N Mahalakshmi, Editor of Outlook Business conversation with Alia Bhatt, a renowned actress of Bollywood at the #WoW2019 event in Mumbai.
#AliaBhatt #WoW2019 #NMahalakshmi #Business #OutlookBusiness #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup
#AliaBhatt #WoW2019 #NMahalakshmi #Business #OutlookBusiness #OutlookMagazine #OutlookGroup
Transcript
00:00 Okay then, the moment that we've all been waiting for ladies and gentlemen is
00:06 finally here. It's time to announce the Outlook Business WOW Awards 2019.
00:17 The Outlook Business WOW Awards currently in its fourth year acknowledges women
00:21 achievers who through their sheer grit and determination have reached the
00:26 pinnacle. So far more than 60 achievers have been honored and this evening we
00:32 continue with our journey of celebrating excellence. So ladies and gentlemen if
00:38 you are ready for this then can you please give me a huge round of applause
00:43 come on and you continue to do that as every single awardee comes onto the
00:49 stage and of course we're going to begin with the WOW Awards on a very very high
00:54 note. To do the honors may I please invite on stage CEO Outlook Group
00:59 Indranil Roy and Mahalakshmi, Editor Outlook Business to please join me on
01:06 stage.
01:09 Hey come on let's clap to the beat of the music.
01:19 Please give them way. And I'd also like to invite on stage publisher Outlook
01:31 Business Miss Vidya Menon to please join me.
01:35 Okay there she comes.
01:46 Here we are ladies and gentlemen with our first awardee tonight Outlook
01:55 Business WOW Mumbai Celebrity of the Year. She made her Bollywood debut with
02:02 Karan Johar's Student of the Year alongside Varun Dhawan and Siddharth Malhotra
02:06 in 2012 and in just seven years we all know that she's carved a niche for
02:13 herself in Bollywood with her sheer versatility and I must say choice of
02:17 roles leaving all of us in the room thirsting for more with a string of
02:23 movies that showcased her repertoire right from Highway my personal favorite
02:28 to Two States, Humpty Sharma ki Dulhania, Udta Punjab, Jaya Zindagi Badrinath ki Dulhania,
02:35 Raazi 2, Gully Boy most recently she has emerged as the youngest powerhouse of
02:42 talent in Bollywood. Ladies and gentlemen please put your hands together to
02:48 welcome on stage the one and only Alia Bhatt.
02:54 Alia thank you so much for joining us here this evening. Ladies and gentlemen a
03:07 huge round of applause for our WOW Celebrity of the Year Mumbai. I'd like to
03:12 request Mahalakshmi to please confer on our very very special guest an award
03:18 that she truly truly deserves.
03:22 Let's have the award on stage.
03:34 Miss Mahalakshmi requesting you to please do the honors ladies and
03:38 gentlemen Outlook Business WOW Celebrity of the Year 2019.
03:45 And may I now call on stage Anil Kaushal, Head Loop in Life Consumer Healthcare and
03:55 Simrad Bishnoi, Senior Vice President Amway to present Alia with their
03:59 goodies and of course their best wishes.
04:04 All right let's this obviously is a photo opportunity so I'm gonna request
04:15 you. Hi Simrad, please join us.
04:25 Beautiful goodies for the beautiful lady.
04:29 Okay all of us on stage I'm gonna request you to come together center
04:38 stage let's do a quick photo opportunity.
04:42 [Music]
04:45 Yes ladies and gentlemen please feel free to keep the claps coming come on.
05:09 And even though she's with us in blood and flesh there's something that I'd
05:14 like you to take a look at.
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06:15 Yes ladies and gentlemen wow celebrity of the Alia Bhatt. Alia thank you so much
06:23 for joining us and of course Mr. Roy I thank you at this moment request you to
06:27 please take your seat and I'm going to request Miss Mahalakshmi to join Alia in
06:31 conversation for the next couple of minutes. Would you like to hear from her?
06:35 Yes okay so we're going to set the stage in the meanwhile.
06:42 Okay now Alia it's pretty evident that every human being in this room right now
06:56 wants a selfie with you. So which is practically not possible right so here's
07:06 what we're going to do while we set the stage we're going to do a quick selfie
07:09 from the stage with our audience in the background we're going to hashtag it
07:13 with #Vow2019 and if you see yourself ladies and gentlemen then please put
07:18 your handle your Twitter handle or your account name in the comments and repost
07:23 it by tagging yourself okay is that a deal? Hey listen I'm just trying to help
07:28 you okay all right here we go.
07:32 [Music]
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08:11 Okay did my best guys. Miss Mahalakshmi over to you.
08:19 Such a lovely evening it has been and Alia it couldn't have been more beautiful
08:30 without you. You're just saying that because I'm here. No I'm not saying I'm
08:36 not saying it for the heck of it and I can probably get like a 500 testimonials
08:41 here. What do you guys say? Obviously they won't say no. No but thank you thank you
08:50 for having me here thank you for this award and thank you to everybody you're
08:53 all like so bright and chirpy and energetic and it's really important that
08:59 I see energy right now because I'm very very tired so it's always lovely to see
09:03 warm beautiful happy faces at the end of a long day. And for your information
09:08 we've been here since 445. PM. Yes. I've been up since 5 a.m.
09:15 So I'm about like 10 hours ahead of you all but still thank you. Sure. I was just
09:26 thinking about all the roles that you have played and you have played such
09:30 nuanced characters. Now tell us what is the kind of preparation that goes into
09:36 doing these roles really and how do you select these roles? I select my roles
09:43 literally how somebody wakes up in the morning and selects what they want to
09:48 eat. You know you're on a holiday and you have to go out and you have to pick a
09:53 restaurant. What do you do? You go with your gut. Literally your gut because your
09:59 gut wants some food but it's just an instinctive feeling that comes from
10:04 within and you say okay now I want to eat Indian or I want to eat Chinese or I
10:08 want to eat Thai because that's what's coming from within. When you read scripts
10:12 and you hear narrations and you hear stories it can take three seconds for
10:16 you to know okay this is what I want to do. I know it seems really easy, sounds
10:21 really easy but it's literally that easy. You have to listen to your gut and it
10:26 could be at that point that I may be wanting something but something may come
10:29 my way like I may want to do a comedy but a drama may come my way and it
10:34 suddenly see me like oh I want to do a drama so I go ahead and do it. There's no
10:38 clinical thought process to it. It's as simple as choosing you know your
10:44 food or a good pair of socks. And the preparation? Preparation? I prefer to
10:53 go with the instinct of my director because I feel like every
10:58 director will be different. So every director's process will be different. So
11:02 hence my process will be different in every film. If I have a fixed process
11:06 then somehow or someday I will be the same or the same version of myself. So I
11:14 keep saying that I'm moody, floaty, fire, desire. The reason I say I'm floaty is
11:18 because I can literally float along with anyone and follow their lead
11:23 and I love doing that. Although I'm a leader but I like following my
11:27 director's lead and just discovering the character. Tell me you've grown up in a
11:31 family of actors and directors and how has that environment really shaped you
11:36 as a professional in the space? When I was growing up I was not really aware of
11:42 this actor-director kind of vibe. In my head I was the biggest star even as a
11:46 kid you know because I used to perform for my grandparents when they used to
11:50 come home every Sunday. I used to perform in front of the mirror. So I was literally in
11:54 my own world while growing up. I really understood this actor-director world
12:01 once I started acting. So as bizarre as it may sound my parents kept me
12:06 very away from the limelight and from the entertainment part of their life.
12:11 It was very functional our relationship at home and very family-like and I was
12:17 literally in my own world. So but one thing for sure is that I don't know
12:21 whether it's because they're actors or directors but my parents have always
12:24 brought me up in a way to have my own opinion and have a voice of my own in my
12:30 own house. Never once did they bestow a certain thought on us. For example my
12:37 father always made us work against the ordinary. So one would say that okay your
12:43 exams are coming up I'm gonna fail and he'll be like what you're gonna fail? I'll
12:46 give you two lakhs if you fail. I said okay. He said if you get 30% no if you
12:52 get 70% I will give you 50,000. If you get 90% I will give you 20,000. So he was
12:58 going backwards and that just kind of took away that fear of okay that I have
13:04 to perform now I will perform because I want to not because I have to. And that's
13:09 imagine so if that's the route that he took to bring me up the whole journey
13:14 was was very odd and very beautiful.
13:18 Generally there is this you know thought that star kids have it easy. What are
13:24 your thoughts around nepotism?
13:26 Well my thoughts around nepotism are it doesn't come from a very
13:33 negative place because I feel like it exists in every field where in which if
13:38 you if you know somebody in a certain field that you want to be a part of you
13:42 will help them but having said that because I am such so in love with
13:47 acting and being an actor that I would be devastated if I hadn't gotten the
13:52 opportunity. So I am in no place to sit and go like oh you know they don't know
13:57 what they're talking about how can you say that of course it it feels terrible
14:02 if you feel like somebody else is getting an opportunity because of their
14:04 family line. So there is no way to counter that thought it does exist but
14:09 having said that once you you come into the foray so to speak the audience
14:15 chooses you. So if you are working it's not because you're just getting lucky
14:20 every time. So there does go some hard work in that quite a lot of hard
14:25 work so while keeping in mind the sentiment it's also important not to
14:29 discard a lot of hard work but yeah as I said it there's no negative thoughts
14:35 it's just like I can't wake up and say sorry that I've been born to this family
14:39 but I can definitely say that I will work as hard as possible to prove that I
14:43 deserve to be here.
14:44 Sure. Finally you get to work with your dad in Sadak 2. How excited are you about that?
14:50 I'm petrified. I'm petrified to work with my father because you know he keeps
14:55 looking at me and saying Alia there's a wall there's a wall in front of you I
15:00 can't get through to you and that could be possibly true because I'm a little
15:04 guarded and he's my father and he kind of knows how I feel but I don't really
15:08 want to let my guard down so easily so he believes that once he starts
15:12 directing me the walls gonna drop which is true so I'm scared to break that wall
15:17 because it'll be quite a revelation for me and for our relationship as father-daughter.
15:23 You're a wonderful versatile actress but that apart you're also a
15:28 fabulous singer. First of all where did that come from? Did you go through formal learning?
15:32 From the bathroom.
15:34 It's true. I started singing in the bathroom. I continued singing in the bathroom.
15:39 You never received any formal training? You didn't learn formally?
15:42 Not at all. I never learned. I'm in the school little bit gaga we used to do and all as kids
15:46 but professional training I've never taken. Yeah it's come from the bathroom.
15:52 Just a couple of lines.
15:53 Which song?
15:55 It's a very difficult song. Give us some other song.
15:59 Samjhava? Udta? Ek Kudi na? That's easier.
16:08 Can you give us some reverb?
16:10 (Laughter)
16:12 Chit chit.
16:18 (Sings in Urdu)
16:35 (Sings in Urdu)
16:50 (Applause)
16:57 The reverb really does it.
16:59 Just one last question by a person who from our women followers who wanted to ask a question.
17:07 It was a wonderful question. May I just call upon the person to come up on stage and ask the question please.
17:15 It's a very relevant question especially in today's times of social media.
17:23 (Pause)
17:29 Okay I'm very nervous right now.
17:32 Sit.
17:33 Oh no no you sit.
17:35 No no you sit.
17:37 Okay thank you.
17:39 You can sit here.
17:41 Oh so sweet.
17:43 Okay somebody please click a picture.
17:46 (Laughter)
17:48 Focus. I like it.
17:50 No selfie.
17:53 (Laughter)
17:55 Yay.
17:57 Ask your question.
17:58 Okay what I wanted to ask is as we all know you have immense talent and I just wanted to know in any industry is only the core talent and core skills are enough to break through or you need to have the selling skills and the entrepreneurial skills as well?
18:19 Well I wouldn't use, I don't know about the word selling skills but I…
18:25 Essentially ability versus visibility.
18:27 Yes.
18:28 How much should you really focus on visibility versus just focusing on ability?
18:33 Well I always believe this, believe in this that you whatever it is whether it is visibility, respect, appreciation, recognition whatever it is.
18:45 You should not demand it, you should command it and the only way you will command it is through your talent and through what you bring to the table.
18:54 So I always believe less is more, never try too hard, do what you feel is right from the heart, overusing the head never translates as true and always you can always see through it.
19:09 So I prefer to be more heart than head.
19:12 Thank you so much.
19:14 You are most welcome.
19:15 My pleasure to share this stage with you.
19:17 Thank you.
19:18 Thank you Alia.
19:19 You have been an absolute delight and it's been a great evening.
19:24 Thank you for being such a sport.
19:26 Thank you so much.
19:27 Really appreciate it.
19:28 Thank you for the award and thank you everyone.
19:30 Apart from reaching great heights, we do hope as you become an even bigger celebrity, keep that fervor, just keep it lively just as you have done today and forever.
19:43 Thank you.
19:44 Thank you.
19:46 Thank you.
19:48 Thank you.
19:51 Thank you.
19:53 Thank you.
19:54 Thank you.
19:55 Thank you.
19:56 Thank you.