Sriram Raghavan On Casting Katrina Kaif And Vijay Sethupathi In Merry Christmas: I Just Needed An Offbeat Pairing

Sriram Raghavan recently shared the reason why he chose to cast Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi in his upcoming film Merry Christmas.

Sriram Raghavan, known for helming some of the best thrillers in the country, left everyone excited when he shared that his next, Merry Christmas will star Katrina Kaif and Vijay Sethupathi in leading roles. To add more to everyone’s excitement, the makers recently unveiled some vintage-styled posters featuring this ‘unconventional’ pair.

In an interaction with News18, Sriram said that he chose to cast these two stars because the story of the film demanded it.

The filmmaker told the publication, “When you see the film, you’ll know. The story is such that I just needed a very off-beat pairing or casting and I was trying various combinations and permutations and I happened to meet Vijay at a festival in Melbourne and I’d seen some of his films. I just felt, ‘What if I do this odd combination’ and it has got its curiosity value, I hope.”

Raghavan shared that both Katrina and Vijay play very interesting characters in Merry Christmas and added, “When you will see the film, you’ll know why I cast them. I just wanted two people who never worked with each other and you can’t even think what they will do together.”

Interestingly, Merry Christmas has been shot simultaneously in Hindi and Tamil and both the versions will have some slight variations.

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Explaining the reason behind the same, the director said, “It’s not one film, it’s two films. There is a Hindi film, which has got Vijay Sethupathi and Katrina Kaif and one child along with a few other characters. There is a Tamil film with the same Vijay Sethupathi, Katrina and the child, and the other actors are different. So I wanted to make a Tamil film also since Vijay is a very acclaimed actor in the South and I thought it will be just good for us to make two versions of this film. They are broadly the same, 95 per cent they are the same but of course, language changes and some characters also I wanted to change so that it doesn’t look like a dubbed film.”