Bollywood actors Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher and Rana Daggubatti had just finished filming an intense action sequence featuring ambulances and police cars on Wednesday in Abu Dhabi’s Al Hodariyat bridge when we met, but during their lunch break they behaved just like college buddies.
“Today is the last day of filming in Abu Dhabi. It was a relatively easy shoot today compared to shooting in the desert at 49 degrees Celsius weather,” said Kumar who plays an intelligence officer in director Neeraj Pandey’s Baby. In the thriller, Kumar is a part of an investigation team on a mission to thwart a series of attacks against civilians in India. “We needed a terrain that looked raw, since it’s a thriller… And Abu Dhabi fit the bill. The infrastructure here is so good that everything went as planned,” said Kumar.
To which Kher, who reunites with Kumar and Pandey after Special Chhabis, said “today I feel like I’m in Switzerland”. We were all seated on the carpeted floor of their mobile vanity van stationed on the foot of the bridge. It was clear from their body language that the three actors bonded well.
“It’s not like we have a choice, when you are shooting for days in a desert... But jokes aside, they are great people,” said Daggubatti, who confirmed that arm wrestling and 20 Questions were some popular games on the set. Wednesday was their ninth day of filming in the UAE and scenes set at Abu Dhabi Airport, Liwa and Al Ain are already in the bag. A 100-strong crew are at work to make the action thriller come alive. In Baby, Abu Dhabi is featured as a fictional city in the Middle East. Kumar’s job to hunt down the suspects and bring them here.
Kumar also revealed that he will be back in Abu Dhabi to film his drama Air Lift in May.
