Yash-starrer Toxic changes how you see ‘man-woman dynamic, it’s gray’, says Kiara Advani | Regional News

Speaking about the film with Bombay Times, Kiara said the character of Nadia made her rethink what she knew about love and relationships. “With Toxic, which is coming up, I think it completely changes the way you see the man-woman dynamic. And in fact, even for me, when Geetu Mohandas narrated the script to me, it took a while for me to understand that okay, this is also normal. It may be gray, it may be not in your conventional space, but there’s a certain liberation in love.”

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That moment of recognition stayed with her long after the narration ended. “That’s when Nadia was narrated to me and I was like, wow. I mean, I wish I was capable of being so detached and liberated in my own thoughts and the way I, you know…”

The first look at Nadia presents Advani set against a circus backdrop, balancing glamorous aesthetics with emotional depth that suggests grief and melancholy beneath the surface spectacle.

South cinema vs Hindi cinema

On the question of whether working across industries feels different, Kiara Advani was measured. “I don’t think… I think eventually there may be slight cultural differences, but I feel eventually at the core we’re all Indians, so there’s a similarity, there’s a familiarity. Even the style of working sometimes, the bigger the stars and backup, which is great over there. But apart from that, I feel I’ve had a fairly similar experience with working in Hindi and in Telugu language.” Kannada, however, was a different matter entirely.

“Working in Kannada, I think I would say Toxic has been challenging because it’s for the first time that we shot in both English and Kannada. We would do the same scene. So this shot was an English shot first till we got the take right. Then we do the Kannada take, because you’re, at least for someone like me, Kannada not being my language, mugging up my dialogues literally the night before,” she recounted.

Shooting for Toxic

The toughest test came during what she now calls the best scene of her career. Kiara Advani had workshopped it with acting coach Atul Monga, prepared obsessively, and arrived on set ready. Geetu had even given her specific instructions for that day. “Geetu is like, okay, tomorrow when you come on set, I want you to be… and I’m a person when I walk on set I’m always like, ‘Hi, what’s up, good morning’, I’m that person. And she’s like, ‘I don’t want pleasantries, I want you to come in that zone, no hi hello, not your team, nobody, just be in a zone today’.”

Kiara Advani surrendered to the instruction. Then, on the morning of the shoot, everything changed. “I’ve reached set and in the morning I get brand new Kannada dialogues. And this is like three pages or two pages of dialogues. And she was like, they worked on the lines at night and they found these to be more powerful and this and that. And I’m like, because mentally I’m in my zone, right?”

What followed was a choice she did not even debate. “I can’t be, I want to push now. We just have to do it. So now there’s no why did they do this. I was like no, we just have to figure it out, mug it up, get there and do it.” And she did. The scene, blocked over two days, was wrapped in one. “I really feel there was some divine energy because I have learned those lines on set, gone and done the take. And that two-day shoot we finished in one day.”

Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups is produced by Venkat K. Narayana and Yash under KVN Productions and Monster Mind Creations respectively. The film was slated to to release in cinemas on June 4, however has been indefinitely postponed.