Aishwarya Rajesh's Vada Chennai test: two minutes of swearing

Jolly O Gymkhana, the new SUN NXT chat show hosted by Jegan Krishnan, opened with Aishwarya Rajesh in the chair, and she used the slot to settle two things. The first was her audition story for Vada Chennai. The second was Vada Chennai 2.

The audition story is the one that lands. Vetri Maaran, she said, made her swear continuously for two full minutes at the audition, without pause, without flinching. She took the brief and did the two minutes. The scene in the finished film that built on that workout is well known by now. Hearing where it came from is something else.

On the sequel, she gave the answer fans have been parking on her doorstep for years. The episode keeps the actual specifics behind the SUN NXT paywall, but the show’s framing is clear: Aishwarya has confirmed where the project stands. Vada Chennai opened in 2018; the sequel has been on Vetri Maaran’s slate, in some form, ever since.

The episode also opens up a few angles that do not usually make it into a press round. Aishwarya talks about the years she spent at a women-only college and the urge that built up inside it. The release valve, she said, was a ten-day stretch of bunking classes back to back the moment she got into a co-ed environment. Jegan Krishnan keeps the room loose; the house band Office Gana plays in.

A new episode drops every Thursday. The line-up for the coming weeks runs through Dhruv Vikram, Ravi Mohan, Mirchi Shiva, Premgi Amaren, Harish Kalyan, Mahat Raghavendra, Vaibhav Reddy, Aswin Kakumanu and the digital duo Gopi-Sudhakar.