Being a terribly private person doesn’t bode well for a celebrity in an age where even veteran actors are aware of the benefits of over-sharing. (In related news, Amitabh Bachchan has crossed 56,000 tweets, y’all.) But over the course of our tête-à-tête with Katrina Kaif on the day of her big Instagram debut, we can confirm one thing: That goofy girl-next-door that you saw chatting up a storm with Anushka Sharma on Karan Johar’s couch is, in fact, the real deal.
Uninhibited (“My nails are somehow just never done on the day when I’m taking a lot of photos!”) and completely unabashed, she welcomes us to her sunny Instagram world: “My handle is @katrinakaif – The correct term is ‘handle’, right? Please do follow me – am I saying it right? You’ll have to cut me some slack, I’m still new to this jargon,” she candidly confesses.
When she isn’t posing for celebrity photographers like Mario Testino, she can be found amassing an army of almost a million followers in 24 hours flat. But that’s nothing new for Katrina: Over the course of the past nine months, 11 million people have lapped up her distinct brand of self-deprecating humour on her Facebook page. We got her to address all your pertinent questions on what to expect from her sophomore social media outing. Just don’t stare at her nails too closely, okay? Everyone has the right to hit snooze on their mani-pedi appointment.
The one OCD condition that she set before hopping onboard
My handle had to be @katrinakaif. I didn’t want any variations. If I didn’t get that handle, I would have maybe called the whole thing off.
What really changed her mind about going Insta-crazy
As everyone knows, I’ve always had my reservations about social media. If you rewind back to a few years ago, no one knew who was going where. But since then, we’ve seen such a huge shift. Thanks to the incessant paparazzi everywhere and the digital boom, everything is uploaded online immediately and everyone knows where I am in 15 minutes. The reasons I wasn’t on social media have now become irrelevant. The only thing that really changed was that I thought it’d be nice for me to have a say in what’s being spoken about me. It’s nice to have your own voice cutting through the cacophony, one that you’re in control of.
The one Instagram secret she’d like to let you in on
I have never been one of those Instagram stalkers — of which there are quite a few of, I’ll warn you. By stalkers, I mean those people who claim not to be on Instagram, but have these secret handles from where they keep a watch on everyone.
But she’s aware of all the real world stalkers
The fan clubs are insanely active. My mom knows where I am even before I have a chance to tell her. She’s constantly calling me up saying, “I saw you at this place, but how come you don’t have a photo of it?” I am resigned to the fact by now. “Mom, I don’t know how they do it, but they just have everything.”
The one Instagram cliché she’ll never fall for
I can guarantee you that my handle won’t just be a curation of those highly stylized, touched-up photoshoot pictures that you see everywhere. I have some rough content planned out for the next two weeks and I hope people will find it funny. If they don’t, then I’m in trouble; it’s time to go back to the drawing board. But my content will always ring true to me and my weird sense of humour.
That’s what I’ve maintained on Facebook—that personal touch. It’s always me replying to fans in the comments; it’s not something that’s handled by a team. If this is my personal voice, I don’t want to do anything that doesn’t ring true for me. Then there’s no difference between the real Katrina and the character you see Katrina playing in a movie.
The one social media rule she’ll never break
I have this one golden commandment that I never break: No phones while you’re on set. When I’m shooting, I check my phone twice in a day, at lunch time and later at pack-up. Once my make-up is done, my phone goes with one of my assistants. You’re there to do a job, and I know for a fact that my mind can wander easily.
And we are all anyway too addicted. I always have this joke about how I don’t go out with my friends for dinner; we all take our phones out for dinner because everyone has their nose buried in their gadgets. That’s how we end up missing the ‘live’ moments with each other.
The one grouse that she has with the digital world
When the pap takes pictures of me and posts it online, they always have the worst pictures. I promise you when I came out of the airport, I wasn’t looking that bad. How have they conspired and found the absolute worst ones? It just makes you think, do they not like me? Are they doing it on purpose? Some locha is definitely going on with these photographers. [laughs]
