Rani Mukherjee's 'Lady Gaga' connection in Aiyya

Rani Mukherjee has a close connection with Lady Gaga these days. The young actress Anita Date (seen in Zor Lagake...Haiyya!) plays Rani’s best-friend in Aiyya who is gaga over Lady Gaga. And they all call her Gagabai. Says a source close to the project, “Rani’s character has a completely wacked-out friend named Maina played by newcomer Anita Date. She dresses up like Lady Gaga, listens to her songs and actually believes she is Lady Gaga. So everyone calls her Gagabai.” Apparently Rani and ‘Gagabai’ get together in the film to groove and jam to some of Lady Gaga’s chartbusters. Our source informs us that a lot of the plot’s focus is on the newbie actress Anita Date who plays Gagabai. Says a source close to the film’s producers, “Rani and this actress worked very closely in the film. Rani nurtured the younger actress. Helped her with her ‘Gaga’ look and laughed the loudest in her comic scenes. Not once was there any sense of one-upmanship in her attitude towards the junior actress. We at Viacom 18 had heard of the rivalry between actresses. But here was an established superstar who actually nurtured the actress who plays her seriously eccentric saheli.” To those expecting a cloudburst of Rani Mukherjee’s trademark exuberance in her new film Aiyyaa here’s more news to whet the appetite. Rani plays a diehard fan of South Indian heroes—Rajnikanth, Kamal Haasan, Vikram, Suriya and Ramcharan Teja—in Aiyyaa. Her character Meenaxi spends all her time fantasizing about being caught on camera in tantalizing positions with her South Indian matinee idols. This is where the South Indian star Prithviraj steps in. He plays a South Indian boozard named Suriya. Apparently the film has some highly erotic dream-fantasy sequences featuring Rani and Prithviraj with mock-Sanskritized lyrics, as the duo strikes Kamasutra pose. Says a source close to the project, “Dancing to Lady Gaga and to erotic-fantasy songs in South Indian cinema style, Rani has completely let go in the film. She is full-on bindaas. Playing a diehard fan of South Indian films she practices on Prithviraj who plays a drunkard, the steps and positions she has seen her Southie idols pose. Her character is also a fan of Sridevi, Juhi Chawla and Madhuri Dixit. This is a full-on filmy character.”