Kareena Kapoor will soon join Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Hrithik Roshan. Her wax statue will be unveiled at the new Madame Tussauds museum in UK’s Blackpool this September. It will then tour other museums in the US, Europe and Asia, starting with Bangkok in January, followed by Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Washington DC, Berlin, Amsterdam, Vienna and ending at London.Buzz is that the deal with Kareena had almost fallen through, as the actor, who is busy shooting for Bodyguard, couldn’t make it to her grandfather Raj Kapoor’s retrospective at this year’s IIFA in Toronto where the announcement was to be made. After a no from her, the event management company, Wizcraft, had urged Tussauds to consider Katrina Kaif, Priyanka Chopra, Rani Mukerji and even Madhuri Dixit.
Kareena’s schedule and ad shoots have left her with no time. This year she’s juggling five big films starring the five Khans — Bodyguard (Salman), RA.One (SRK), Agent Vinod (Saif), Short Term Shaadi (Imran) and The Act Of Murder (Aamir). “I catch up with my family while commuting. It’s been a 14-hour work day for months. I just have time to grab dinner and crash post midnight,” she sighs. “There are people fighting for an hour of my time, 24 hours isn’t enough.”
Dates were apparently an issue with the Tussauds creative team too as they needed to take measurements. Kareena, who was in London to meet Saif, who’s filming his home production Cocktail there, had a sitting with the team during which they took precise measurements and built a catalogue of reference photographs to work with.
Last month, a source from the museum was quoted as saying that a wax figurine of Kareena’s wouldn’t be launched this year as Hrithik’s model had been unveiled in January and they wanted to focus on this Bollywood attraction in 2011. But a few days ago, Nicky Marsh, director, global marketing at Madame Tussauds, confirmed that Kareena would be the next Indian star to be immortalised: “With this new experience, we hope to give more fans the chance to meet their favourite stars like Kareena in wax as she travels the world,” says Marsh.
The star is the brand ambassador of a Size Zero laptop and even has a pizza and clutch purse named after her. Now, she will have a waxen lookalike too. Says Kareena “All this is an added responsibility that makes me nervous. But it’s an honour and a high too.”
