Katrina first floated into the industry with her debut, Kaizad Gustad's Boom (2003). The director though, refuses to talk about his discovery as he tersely says, "I don't want to hurt anyone."
Boom's producer Ayesha Shroff is more forthcoming, "During the course of some research, Kaizad chanced upon her. He tells me that a few days later, she went to his house and asked him, 'I'm interested in India.
Do you think I have a future in India as a model or in films?' She came down to Mumbai, auditioned and got the role. I think she had done some modeling in London. I thought she would have a career here. At that time, there was nobody with a good body, no one was wearing bikinis."
But where did Kaizad meet her? Ayesha refuses to say. "I can't talk about it. What's the point? What she has achieved is admirable and it's not easy for a woman to pull herself out of nothing and make such a huge name for herself."
What she does talk about is how Katrina got her last name. "Her passport says Turquotte. We created an identity for her. She was this pretty young English girl, and we gave her the Kashmiri father and thought of calling her Katrina Kazi. We thought we'd give her some kind of Indian ancestry, to connect with the audience. Those times were different, now people are more accepting. But then we thought that Kazi sounded too... religious? We were to introduce her to the press and at that time, Mohammad Kaif was at the top, and so we said, Katrina Kaif sounds really great. In fact, the brochures for the press say Katrina Kazi. We passed that off saying, 'Oh that's a printing mistake," says Ayesha.
Is Katrina in touch with her? "No. But that's a personal choice. What hurts me is that she distances herself from Boom. When Boom released, she was seeing Salman, she dismissed her debut saying she didn't know what she was doing and so she did the bikini scene, the smooching scene. No one put a gun to anybody's head. She is a very intelligent young woman, she knows what she has going and doesn't want to jeopardize it."
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