No pleasantries, just the zone
Kiara Advani is known for her warm, bubbly personality on set, but for her upcoming film Toxic: A Fairy Tale For Grown-Ups, she had to leave all that at the door. The actress recently opened up about director Geetu Mohandas’ strict ‘no pleasantries’ rule, which meant no hi, hello, or chit-chat with anyone—not even her own team.
In a chat with Bombay Times, Kiara revealed, “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’.” The idea was to keep her completely immersed in her character’s headspace, without any distractions.
Bilingual shoot pushed Kiara out of comfort zone
But that wasn’t the only challenge. Kiara also revealed that Toxic was shot in both English and Kannada, making it one of the most demanding projects of her career. She explained, “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.”
Despite the linguistic stretch, Kiara said the experience of working in the Kannada film industry felt familiar. She added, “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.”
Toxic release date pushed back
Kiara stars opposite Yash in this much-anticipated bilingual film, which also features Nayanthara, Huma Qureshi, Rukmini Vasanth, and Tara Sutaria. Toxic was originally slated for a June 4, 2026 release, but sources confirm the date has been postponed. A new release date is yet to be announced.
Fans are already buzzing about the film, especially after Kiara’s candid revelations about the intense, no-nonsense shooting style. Looks like this ‘fairy tale for grown-ups’ is going to be anything but ordinary.