Kaala depicts Rajinikanth's affair with Huma Qureshi: will it backfire commercially, politically for the superstar?

Although Rajinikanth started his career as an antagonist, the continuous success of his heroic films gave him a clean image that the actor was pressurised by distributors and producers to not experiment much. Unlike Kamal Haasan, who openly portrayed relationship woes in his films, Rajinikanth stopped doing roles which affect his clean image.

Huma Qureshi and Rajinikanth in a still from Kaala

Rajinikanth actually faced mixed reviews for his 1994 Tamil comedy film Veera in which he was seen playing a guy who struggles between his two wives — Meena and Roja.

But in Kaala, Rajinikanth would be breaking this jinx. In a past interaction, Pa Ranjith had said that Eswari Rao plays Rajinikanth’s wife in Kaala. Now, the director has also revealed the characterisation of Huma Qureshi in the film.

In an interview to Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan, Ranjith revealed that  Huma Qureshi plays a strong 45-year-old independent woman named Zareena who will be seen as Rajinikanth’s lover in the film. In the official promotional pics revealed to the media, Rajinikanth tattooed Zareena’s name on his hand. It is a pleasant surprise to know Rajinikanth plays a common man because normally his mainstream commercial films would have plenty of action sequences and only offer only a little scope for emotional elements.

Though Rajinikanth’s ardent fans were slightly disappointed with the lack of mass elements in Kabali, a section of fans appreciated Ranjith for bringing back the ‘actor’ Rajinikanth. At the audio launch of Kaala, Rajinikanth said, “After watching Kabali, I appreciated Ranjith by saying that he has won as a director but asked him to not listen to the feedback of fans as they wouldn’t not be liking the slow-paced screenplay and my search for Kumudhavali (Kabali’s wife, played by Radhika Apte) in the film”.

Rajinikanth also cited at the audio launch that romancing a young heroine like Sonakshi Sinha is one of the major reasons for the failure of Lingaa so the actor has become cautious in selecting his on-screen pair.

Just like Kabali, Ranjith seems to have experimented a bit with Rajinikanth-Huma Qureshi portions in Kaala.  “We approached many actresses in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi for Zareena’s role. After watching Huma Qureshi’s performance in Gangs of Wasseypur, I decided that she will be perfect to portray Zareena. My producer Dhanush and Rajinikanth sir were also convinced that Huma will be the apt choice," said Ranjith.

Ranjith has also revealed that there is a duet song between Rajinikanth and Huma in the film. Fans are excited to know how Ranjith handled the superstar’s relationship with Huma and Eswari in the film. Anything which goes wrong would affect the actor’s political entry because politicos are waiting for Rajinikanth to commit a mistake. When Ranjith met Huma for the narration, the actress talked at length about the powerful characterisation of Radhika Apte in Kabali. For her portions in Kaala, Huma shot for nearly 45 days in Mumbai and Chennai.

Produced by Dhanush’s Wunderbar Films, the runtime of Kaala is 2 hours 46 minutes and the film is all set to release on 7 June in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi.

Lyca Productions, producers of Rajinikanth’s 2.0 will be distributing Kaala in Tamil Nadu. Vinod, Executive Producer of Wunderbar Films told Firstpost that Anil Thadani's AA Films will be taking care of the release of Kaala in North India.

(Also read — Kaala art director Ramalingam on working with Rajinikanth and recreating Dharavi, Dhobhi Ghat in Chennai)