Excitement had built up to a crescendo. D-day was imminent. Super diva Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was to begin shooting for Fanney Khan from October 6… but hey, suddenly on the evening before, the much-awaited shoot was cancelled!

This, however, was far from a ‘I-broke-my-toenail-and-I-can’t-shoot’ tantrum. The ever-professional Ash, who is utterly meticulous about every detail of her roles, particularly the make-up, hair, styling and accessories, apparently realised that they were simply not sufficiently prepared to start shooting.

The main issue evidently lay in her costumes. With B-town’s popular Manish Malhotra on board as designer, it had looked like all would be smooth sailing. Ash herself had taken a keen interest in her look and clothes, as she is known to do. But apparently everyone took too much for granted…

The bomb dropped just a day before she was to commence shooting with Rajkummar Rao for this Atul Manjrekar directorial. Naturally, producers Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Prernaa Arora and Bhushan Kumar were aghast to learn that their leading lady had decided to cancel on the eve of the very first day of her shoot.

Taking a final look at the costumes, Ash apparently felt that they looked too ‘Indian’ in their styling, which would be at odds with the image of the glamorous singing star she plays in the film. Lacking in both the sexy and glamour quotient, she took a call and decided that they could not go ahead with the shoot and deal with the consequences of bad clothes later. She informed the producers that it made sense to shoot another day when everything was in perfect order rather than shoot with sub-standard costumes, which could pull down the production values of the film.

Manish Malhotra, who has supposedly been travelling on work between Dubai and Kolkata, has his work cut out. He has evidently not been completely ready with the outfits and Ash clearly wants everything in perfect order before she shoots.

Will Manish be able to make time in his hectic schedule to create super-stunning costumes of a Beyonce-style international standard? Our very own Queen Ash deserves nothing less!