Director Punit Malhotra On His Three Stars In Karan Johar’s Student Of The Year 2: “Tiger Is A Star, Ananya Is Organic, Tara Is Spectacular”

Student of the Year 2 has released and is finding audiences in theaters, especially amongst kids and college students. Considering the fact that this is the target audience base that director Punit Malhotra had set for this second installment in the franchise put together by Karan Johar, he is happy with the way the film is going. Moreover, he is particularly happy about the fact that his three students, Tiger Shroff, Ananya Pandey and Tara Sutaria have delivered.

“See, Tiger is already a star so it was all quite comfortable when he stepped on to the sets. He comes with a good experience of doing films behind him and the task that I had in hand was to make him look and act convincingly as a student,” says Punit, who has earlier worked with Imran Khan in both his films, I Hate Luv Storys and Gori Tere Pyaar Mein.

The challenge though was to ensure that the two leading ladies get the best of launch, especially considering the fact that Karan Johar had earlier launched three careers in the form of Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt and Sidharth Malhotra in Student of the Year.

“The good part about Ananya is that she is organic,” says Punit, “Actually to be honest, I had auditioned Ananya so that we negate this whole comment of nepotism once for and all. She walked into the office for audition, cleared it and then post that we did tons of workshops, both in acting and dancing. She worked hard on voice modulation and body language as well in order to look and behave the part.”

Same was true for Tara as well, even though she has substantial experience in front of the camera, considering her teenage years in television for The Suite Life of Karan and Kabir followed by Oye Jassie!

“Tara is spectacular,” exclaims Punit, “She is confident, beautiful and a really nice actor. She is also more of a method actor. She is trained as well because when you give her an emotion and then you work with her to a certain degree, she takes over from that point on. Moreover, she is simply fabulous in her song and dance sequences.”

Punit is happy to have worked with his team of youngsters. “Tiger, Ananya and Tara talk to me as a friend and not as a director. There was no hierarchy on the sets, we were all on backslapping terms,” says Punit before signing off.

Joginder Tuteja tweets @tutejajoginder

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