On account of Bollywood couple Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan celebrating their 13th wedding anniversary today, let’s revisit their celebrity interview with television host Oprah Winfrey as a couple after their wedding.
The two of them fell in love on the sets of Guru (2007) and got married on April 20, 2007 at Prateeksha, which is veteran actor Amitabh Bachchan’s residence in Mumbai. They welcomed their daughter, Aaradhya Bachchan in 2011.
The couple has acted together in numerous films including Dhai Akshar Prem Ke (2000), Kuch Naa Kaho (2003), Umrao Jaan (2006), Dhoom 2 (2006), and Raavan (2010), to name a few.
The interview, which took place in 2009, covered a variety of topics ranging from Indian couples staying with parents after marriage, to the duo’s love story.
Oprah had also asked Aishwarya why she had not kissed on screen before. “I understand you have never been kissed on camera,” she had said.
After a brief pause, Aishwarya was seen leaning towards Abhishek and saying, “Go on baby,” following which Abhishek had kissed her on the cheek. Seeing this, Oprah, the couple, and the audience had all started laughing.
Explaining why they didn’t need much PDA on screen in India, Abhishek had said jokingly back then, “Not a lot of it happens as openly as in the West. It is not a thing about being accepted or not, it is not required. I don’t think the Indian audience feels it is required. To put it this way I think, if we make up a scene, for example, the boy meets a girl, they fall in love, they want to express their love for each other in the West they will kiss and there they are in love. In India, we break into a song. Isn’t that more interesting? You have this intimate moment and then suddenly snap cut, you are in the mountains and you are singing and dancing. It’s a lot more interesting, I’d much rather that happen.”
A question on how Abhishek had popped the question to Aishwarya also came up, to which the former replied, “I was filming in New York for a movie and I used to stand on the balcony of my hotel room and wish that one day, it would be nice if I was together with her, married. So, I took her to the very same balcony and asked her to marry me.”
Aishwarya added that the proposal felt “very real”. “It was very sweet. It was very real at the same time,” she said.