The Freshman

Ananya Panday Is Poised On The Cusp Of Near-certain Stardom. And Before The Spotlight Comes On, The Frank And Funny 20-year-old Talks To Elle About Her Upcoming Dream Launch And Her Last Few Weeks As A Regular Girl

It’s the afternoon before Ananya Panday leaves for her first-ever cover shoot in Italy. Completely fresh-faced and dressed down in a sweater, she’s comfortably perched on a couch in her living room. “My biggest dream was to be in a Dharma Productions film. Do you know Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and I turned 20 the same year?” she says. In November last year, Panday wrapped up the shooting of Student Of The Year 2, produced by Karan Johar, and touted by many as a dream debut. She remembers being at the screening of SOTY, seven years ago, with the deep longing to become an actor, and life seems to have delivered.

Panday’s first film hits theatres on May 10, but she has already landed her next (Pati Patni Aur Woh directed by Mudassar Aziz) and is the face of Lakme’s lip care range. She is refreshingly aware of her privilege, truly real on social media, and filmy to the core. Her sentences are routinely punctuated with “come on, bro”, Kardashian references pop up normally, as does the mention of Instagram addiction. Panday is like every young girl her age, many of whom make up the 1.3 million people that follow her on Instagram. We played 48 questions with her to find out more.

ELLE: Do you have nicknames?

Ananya Panday: Everyone calls me Panda because of my surname. Or Pandayji [after Salman Khan’s character in Dabangg].

ELLE: Biggest fairy-tale moment?

AP: Le Bal des Débutantes! I treat that as my college experience because there is no other way I would have met so many people from across the world. I had never been dressed in a gown, so this was the first time—and in Jean Paul Gaultier nonetheless!

ELLE: What’s your favourite memory as a child?