Aishwarya Rai's 4-second Pepsi ad appearance "stopped the country", led to 5000 calls overnight, recalls Prahlad Kakkar

Aishwarya Rai became an overnight sensation with Pepsi ad

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Aamir Khan starrer iconic Pepsi commercial was one of the many memorable ads from the 1990s that still have an impact on viewers today.

The ad was a big hit despite both Aishwarya and Aamir not being the big names of the entertainment industry at the time. Aishwarya was still in college, and Aamir had only acted in a few movies.

In a recent interview with ANI, Ad legend Prahlad Kakkar recalled how the 1993 Pepsi commercial's brief appearance of Aishwarya Rai enthralled the country. He gave the then-unknown college student credit for getting a break thanks to the commercial.

He recalled the casting, “The battle was in the casting…It took us three months to cast that film. We wanted people who were already part of the story. Aishwarya was unknown. We wanted a girl who was a stopper because she comes around for four seconds, and she needs to stop the country in its tracks and wants everyone to say, ‘Wow, who is this girl? Who is this girl?’ And that’s exactly what happened.”

Prahlad Kakkar then recalled the commercial and revealed how he received 5,000 phone calls just a day after the ad was released.

He said, “The day it was released, I got 5,000 phone calls the next morning saying, Who is Sanju? (Name of Aishwarya’s character in the ad) Where did she come from?”

The creative force behind the popular advertisement, Prahlad, disclosed that he chose Aishwarya to play "Sanju" because of her captivating eyes.

Prahlad Kakkar explained, “I wasn’t satisfied with anyone…they just didn’t have that quality. It wasn’t enough to be special. I was looking for someone extra special. The kind of face that could stop the whole world in four seconds. And then, some girls found her, her jhola slung over her shoulder, dressed in torn jeans, with wild hair…She was in an Architectural college.”

He elaborated, “So I saw her and said, Is she it? They said, ‘Let’s give her a makeup test.’ So what stopped me, what actually made me pause, were eyes. When I looked into her eyes, I saw the entire universe.”

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“With each mood, the colour of her eyes changed… the colour changed from grey to green to blue depending on her mood. And that mesmerised me. So we gave her a make-up test and glamorised her. And we just were gobsmacked. She was just so mesmerising," he shared.

This famous Pepsi commercial was released before Aishwarya Rai's 1994 victory as Miss India. Interestingly, the commercial also included actress Mahima Chaudhary.