Kangna Ranaut will join the ranks of Freida Pinto and Aishwarya Rai with Deepa Mehta's adaptation of Salman Rushdie's celebrated novel Midnight's Children, reports Mumbai Mirror..
Kangna has been chosen to play a character called Emerald. Described in Rushdie's book as pretty and cryptic, Emerald was one of the toughest and easiest roles to cast for Deepa. Tough, because the character's physicality and emotional graph is so precisely described in the novel that it could only be played by a specific kind of actress.
The role became easy to cast when Deepa Mehta saw Kangna in Anurag Basu's Gangster. She immediaitely knew this was her Emerald.
As Deepa told a friend, "There were second and third choices for other characters. For Emerald I only wanted Kangna." Kangna will play a character married to a Pakistani politician observing the rise and fall of leaders and dreamers from the fringes. The role requires a silently eloquent actress.
Immediately after zeroing in on her choice in Toronto Deepa got in touch with a friend in India who put her on to Kangna.
Next year Kangna joins such seasoned stalwarts as Shabana Azmi, Seema Biswas and Nandita Das in the shooting of Deepa's Midnight's Children. While the director has worked more than once with the other actresses Kangna will be a first for Deepa.
Speaking on the matter from Toronto Deepa says, "Yes, Kangna has agreed to be part of Midnight's Children. I think she's a wonderful actress, not quite like anyone else that I've worked with." Let's hope Mr Rushdie doesn't get too excited about this emerald.
