After creating a stir at the Toronto Film Fest ivalin Canada, Cooking with Stella will finally be released in India early next year. Most excited about this is actress Shriya Saran who plays a big part in this Canadian project. This is Saran’s second international project after The Other End of the Line where she starred opposite Jesse Metcalfe, the heartthrob gardener from Desperate Housewives.

We meet the talkative actress at a children’s park in Andheri, a place that she loves to hang out with her two-and-a-half-year old nephew, Dhruv. Saran plays a nanny in Cooking with Stella and, true to her part, she loves every opportunity to baby-sit. “It’s amazing how simple it is to make Dhruv so happy by just bringing him to the swings,” she smiles. It’s a sunny afternoon but it doesn’t take much prodding to make Saran don her Chanel sunnies, sit on the swings and giggle with pleasure.

In the film, Saran will play Tannu, a nanny to the two-year-old child of a Canadian diplomat and her husband, played by Lisa Ray and Don McKellar. The film, which is based in New Delhi, is a humorous take on how the foreign couple learns to deal with the concept of domestic help in this country. “Whenever anyone from abroad comes to India they are always taken aback by the amount of domestic help we get. From cooks, cleaners to childcare, they are just not used to it. They are also always facing a dilemma about how to treat, react and behave with these people who work for them. Deepa Mehta has captured this confusion really well,” the actress tells us.

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