Pooja Hegde, who made her Cannes debut on the red carpet for Tom Cruise’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ premiere at the 75th edition of the film festival, has said that her first appearance was marred by last-minute mishaps.
Pooja told Film Companion, “We lost all our hair products, makeup, we lost outfits. Thankfully I brought a couple of real jewelry pieces from India which I had hand-carried. We landed, we had this upon us. We couldn’t cry about it because we didn’t have time to do that. I think probably my manager panicked more than me. But I was like, ‘okay fine. Let’s get into the car. Let’s do fittings here. I will figure out the outfit and my team was there. My team ran, they got new hair products, new makeup, all of that, trying to make time, and it was crazy. We have had no lunch, no breakfast. I had my first meal of the day in the night (of red carpet appearance). So it was pretty hectic. My hairstylist had food poisoning, so he was like gonna pass out and he was doing my hair. I have a stand-up team, I am here because of them.”
She added, “I was like ‘what the hell is happening when my makeup artist said we checked in your one bag and I’m like, ‘there were two bags.’ So one was left behind in India, and my face really fell. And then it turns out we had no bags, but by then I was so prepared because I already had my crazy experience. But normally I’m a fighter…So we did disaster management, and it all turned out beautifully, hopefully, on the red carpet.”
Pooja was part of an 11-member Indian delegation to Cannes 2022, as the country was named the Country of Honour at the present film festival. AR Rahman, Ricky Kej Nayanthara, Pooja Hegde, R Madhavan, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui were among the members of the team led by the Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur.
