Samyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; January 30, 2018)

Before she jumps into shooting two back-to-back big-budget films — Vipul Shah’s Namastey England with Arjun Kapoor and Karan Johar’s Kesari with Akshay Kumar —Parineeti Chopra is taking off to Maldives today with her girlfriends for a holiday after wrapping up a Dibaker Banerjee directorial. She plans to rejuvenate with some beach time and scubadiving.

“Maldives has been a favourite holiday destination for Parineeti who is already a certified diver. This time, she wants to brush up her diving skills and learn some advanced moves,” a friend of the actress informed Mirror.

Parineeti kicks off the first schedule of Namastey England with a fun-filled Valentine’s Day photo-shoot on February 14, which will feature her and Arjun in their characters from the film, which is a sequel to the Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif-starrer 2007 hit, Namastey London. The second instalment in the franchise will be a completely new story within the same genre and premise as the original. The makers had picked ‘Namastey Canada’ as the new title for their film, but went back to the original title after a recce in the UK was wrapped up in December. Now, the film will be shot from February up to the summer in the UK, Punjab and Mumbai.

On the sidelines of an event last week, Parineeti had teased fans about a ‘secret’ with respect to her character in Kesari. And while that’s all hush-hush so far, she shared that she has wanted to work with Akshay for a really long time. “I think this is the perfect film because both of us are Punjabis and feel for the subject,” she points out. Directed by Anurag Singh, the film inspired by the Battle of Saragarhi is slated for a 2019 Holi release.