‘Chef remake is different from the Hollywood film’

The Hollywood film, Chef (2014), made a place in everyone’s hearts, with its slice-of-life story about a professional chef who gets fired from his job and then starts a food truck. As the film’s Bollywood adaptation is around the corner, Padmapriya, who stars alongside Saif Ali Khan, says that the film won’t be like the Hollywood one, owing to the cultural context.

“Obviously the plot is similar, but apart from that, everything else will be different. The food, the setting, everything is very different from the Hollywood one, because there are cultural differences between the countries,” she says. “I mean my character in this film is not like [actor] Sofia Vergara’s, as women in America are different, and here they are shaped by different sensibilities. Also, in contrast to the Hollywood film, this one dwells deeper on the relationship between Saif ’s and my character,” she adds.

The 35-year-old actor saw the Hollywood version, starring Sofia Vergara and Jon Favreau, in New York when she was pursuing Masters in Public Administration there. “I had seen it, when I wasn’t involved in the Hindi adaptation of it. As I was staying in New York, I could connect to it more, because of the food. I really liked it back then, and thought it was a really beautiful film,” she says.

Padmapriya adds that the Hollywood film has universal appeal. “Not only because of food, but there’s also the fact about how a person goes through crap in his life, and comes out of it in the end. It’s also about the family, so it’s pretty universal in that sense, and that’s why I think it will work here,” says Padmapriya.

Obviously the plot is similar, but apart from that, everything else will be different. The food, the setting, everything is very different from the Hollywood one, because there are cultural differences between the countries PADMAPRIYA, ACTOR

PHOTO: FOTOCORP