Sunny Leone on Cannes, ‘Kennedy’ and Beyond: ‘This is the Best Moment in My Career So Far’

On the fourth floor of the Palais des Festivals, the main venue of the Cannes Film Festival which overlooks the shimmering Mediterranean waters, Sunny Leone, 42, is wearing a large, fawn jacket over a pastel body-hugging dress. She has back-to-back interviews lined up, some of which are taking place in the balcony where the view is fabulous, but the afternoon sun is beating down, and sometimes she does them inside, in a cooler but darker large room.

It’s been a long, roller coaster ride, Leone says, from where she began and where she is at today — from being one of the top actresses in the adult entertainment industry to walking the Cannes Film Festival’s red carpet for the world premiere of Anurag Kashyap’s film, Kennedy.

Leone plays the female lead, Charlie, in Kennedy, which had its premiere at Cannes’ out of competition midnight section on Wednesday.

Kashyap tells Rolling Stone India that he picked Leone for the role because he wanted a woman in her “40s who is still considered sexy, and who has navigated through this world of men, who are like big bad wolves who find these beautiful, gorgeous women and literally prey on them. And she has gone through all of that and come out at this end, and is still dealing with it.”

He auditioned her, and when she was selected, he asked her to practice a particular laughter, one that is like an inscrutable armor. 

Just before Leone sits down to talk with Rolling Stone India around a small round table in the large room, someone comes to fix her make-up, her hair. 

Over a 30-minute conversation, she doesn’t avoid talking about her past. She brings it up herself, often with a smile and lighthearted self-deprecation, and sometimes she wells up recalling the things she has been through, especially a 2016 interview for a news channel. Edited excerpts:

Rolling Stone India: This is your first time in Cannes, ever?

Sunny Leone: Yes, it’s my first time ever (and) it’s so very exciting.

So when you heard that you’re coming to Cannes, that the film is in the festival’s official selection, how did you…

I cried for two days straight and I’m still holding back tears. It’s such an amazing moment. 

Just shooting with Anurag sir on this film was something I was so happy about and thankful for. And then he called and said, ‘Our film has been selected, we are in, it’s going to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival,’ I just couldn’t hold back… Because the film is one thing, but what it represents is so much more.

We have a beautiful, amazing film, and then there’s my own personal journey that’s led to this particular moment, and it has been a roller coaster to say the least. 

You know, I was born in Canada, then moved to the U.S., worked in the adult industry, then came to India on Bigg Boss, then films, TV and all these different things that I got a chance to do, which are amazing. But then all the hurdles and all the fighting we had to do just to maintain this position of being in Bollywood… To now, me, that same girl, walking the red carpet… that’s the most crazy thought.

Have you been going over your personal journey since this news broke?

My husband and I have this thing that we do; we say from where to where — from where we started and where we are. We started with a negative bank account, then we worked at creating a production company, then we came to Bollywood, a world we knew nothing about… and the mistakes that we made, or I made… Creating a cosmetic line, fragrances, clothing, so many things, but along with that also came the good, the bad and the ugly. And even today we have to fight to get people to understand that I’m not here to hurt anybody, or hurt people’s sentiments. I’m just a girl that wants to work… It’s definitely not been easy and nothing was handed to me in any way, shape or form. I’ve had to claw my way through.  

I’m struck by what you said — that you’re not here to hurt anyone. Who would think that? What do you mean?

I mean different groups of people that will say that you’re hurting the sentiments of our culture, or, the way we feel you should be as a woman. I mean that. But I made my choices in life, I understand my choices, I’m not ashamed of those choices. It is not the same choices that somebody else would ever make… Sab kuch ulta hi kiya maine (laughs) [I did everything backwards] And sometimes there are groups of people that see you as a soft target and want to go after you… And even though I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, it takes time and it takes work to go through so many different things to explain what things are. It’s just so easy to pick on me because there’s so much baggage.   

The cases that get filed against you, or someone writing to Bigg Boss objecting to you being in it, and even in that cringe interview (2016 interview with Bhupendra Chaubey on CNN-IBN), I have always found your reactions graceful, elegant… 

It seems like that from the outside. But if someone throws a card at you, what do you do? It’s very difficult. But for most part I knock on wood [knocks on the round wooden table we are seated around], because most of those cases ended up being in my favor because I did nothing wrong. I just had to prove it. And that’s the unfortunate part, that I had to prove it. But, I guess, that comes with the territory. I’m trying to, in a way, change the way someone might think of someone who comes from the adult industry. (referring to herself) Now you’re in Bollywood, now you’re on television and national television. I mean, that’s just unheard of. 

And now international…

Yes, and now here. I get it, I understand. I’m not saying that I hate those people or that they’re not justified in their thinking. That’s just their opinion and their thinking. But it [fighting cases] just becomes very tedious.

But you seem to have a core of steel. I don’t know. Is it a Sikh-ni thing, or…

Maybe. Yeah, definitely. My perspective on life is, maybe, different from some others. I grew up with immigrant parents in Canada and then we moved to the U.S. I saw my parents struggle. My parents gave us what we needed, not what we wanted… I watched my father in his early 40s getting his master’s degree. After working 10-12 hours a day, he’d be sitting and studying at night and that was very inspiring. Then I lost my mother, and within a year my father was diagnosed with cancer… I think once you go through these types of things in life, and I’m sure so many people have gone through them, you just look at life, at everything you have as a gift. 

I’m thankful for the fact that I get to be in India and make films, ad films, and do photoshoots. I adopted my daughter from India, and I have two beautiful boys and we live in India and love it. And the people who say things that are mean and horrible, it doesn’t matter. Their opinion doesn’t matter to me because I’ve already gone through shit. You can’t hurt me, I’ve already been hurt, you know. Some things… yeah, of course, they hurt your feelings.  

What hurts the most?

I think when they get extremely personal, like some journalists have a way of writing some things that are just blatant lies and meant to create some weird controversy, or something that is so nonsensical, but people will make it newsworthy. Why are you highlighting something that you know is nonsense? These are the same people I sit with and I do interviews with — why would they write things that are not making sense? It’s all a game for other people. But it’s my life, it’s not a game [smiles].  

So this strength, you’re saying, comes from having to deal with so many things in your life…

Yeah, those things, I think, were far worse than dealing with someone just talking shit [laughs].  

So about this role, Charlie. You’ve talked a little bit about the laughter right, that Anurag Kashyap wanted you to practice it. And you’ve said in interviews, that it’s something that your character hides behind. So how is it different here from your own laughter?  

I think that we all know people in life who hide behind a smile or their laughter and give the appearance that everything is okay. And this character definitely does that. She is someone that is stuck in two realities — there is one that she would like to have, and then there’s one that she’s actually in, which is not a good circumstance. It’s not by her doing, it’s the circumstances of the story… And she has this laugh and then there’s her appearance, it reminds me of everything that we do as entertainers. We can’t go on camera and say that we’re hurt, and that we’re feeling so, so bad. We have to put on that smile and do our job, which is to be entertainers and do whatever it is we need to do that day. That part of her character I definitely related to. 

In your interviews, especially the one that I was talking about, I think it was CNN-IBN…

It was Mr. Chaubey.

I found you dealing with pretty gross questions with a smile. So I was very intrigued about what you said about hiding behind a smile. I don’t mean that you were hiding behind your smile in that interview, but you were using your smile to kind of shut down…

Absolutely. If some psychologist were to analyze that video, [they’ll see how] I sit there and I’m doing this with my fingers [pretends to move her fingers nervously], and my jaw is probably clenching at certain points. But I don’t think it was necessarily the questions that he was asking, those questions I’ve been asked many times in my life. It was the manner in which he asked them, it was this accusatory way of making you feel horrible about your choices in life. But he had already made up his mind of who he thought I was… I definitely look back at that moment [because] it was something that was not acceptable in any way. 

I was by myself, like being in this room talking to you. And there were like 15 people over there [gestures to where the camera would have been]. And not one person thought of saying, ‘This is incorrect, you need to stop asking these questions,’ because he’s a senior journalist and no one wants to tell him what to do. That’s not fair. My question to everybody who was in that room is, what did I do to you? Why would you not want to stop this?… Did I do something to you that you wouldn’t feel for the situation that I was in, and you wouldn’t say, ‘Hey, I need to stop this.’ That’s just basic human ethics, but they didn’t exist in that moment… They all just stared at me. 

But when the interview was broadcast, everything blew up… So those are the moments where I say God is great and he watches over me. 

The reaction was what it was mostly because of the way you dealt with the questions.

Yeah. I think if I was yelling back at him, it would have been the other way around.

That’s what I’m saying — that smile. You smile a lot in that interview, and it’s not a happy smile. It’s saying something.

Yeah. It was definitely saying something. I don’t believe in letting somebody get the best of me. Why should he have that? Who is he to me? Why should he take away something from me in that moment? I kept thinking, ‘Okay, maybe the next question is going to be a little better or easier.’ But it wasn’t. It got worse, and worse, and worse. So it was definitely a moment that I would not let this person take me down.  

Your past comes up a lot in interviews, and I’m also talking about it. But it also comes up in the roles that you get offered. Sometimes I feel that the roles you get play on your body, your personality, your past a bit more than…

[Adding] Maybe than they should? Sure. You know, I came into this world [Bollywood] already a part of a different entertainment industry. And when I came to India, I wasn’t thinking, ‘Okay, now let me change everything that I’ve done and erase my past.’ That popularity or whatever it was, it all went hand in hand. It’s not something that you can just say, ‘Okay, now let’s put a turtleneck on her and make her a certain way.’

And working on some of these films where [my role] was more provocative or more sexy, whatever it was… that’s what was on my plate. I can only choose what’s there. And no matter how much, even if my face turns blue talking to different directors, or producers or people to say, ‘Hey, I really want to be in XYZ film,’ it just is not possible. It wasn’t happening. So here’s my plate [gestures as if a plate is in front of her] and I’m going to choose what’s on it because my main goal in life is to work, to show up every single day doing something new, on a different set, and just keep working. And if I keep working, something will come because everything is a stepping stone to something else. So like Anurag sir, he didn’t see my films, but he saw my interviews, and that is where he thought of putting me in this role of Charlie. I don’t know what film I was promoting. But if it wasn’t for those films, I wouldn’t have done the interview and he wouldn’t have seen my interviews… Whatever that was, it worked right? It connected. 

Yeah. 

So it doesn’t matter to me whether someone was typecasting me into a certain role… If it’s sexy and provocative, great. I have no problem with it. But it has to be shot in a particular manner and that is part of my evolution as an actress. Even Charlie is glamorous, she is beautiful. It’s not like it’s out of the zone of what people have seen. But the manner in which it has been shot makes it look beautiful and classy.  

So apart from the fact that Kennedy has come to Cannes, do you see this film as a big shift in your career in Bollywood?

I would say that this is definitely the best moment in my career so far — working on this film, even when I signed it, I thought that this is just going to be so amazing. And hopefully I’ll be able to work on projects that are going to be on this, I wouldn’t say level as far as popularity or prestige is concerned, but the stories that are being offered or some of the people that I might get to work with, that I haven’t gotten a chance to work with. So I’m hoping that door opens because I’m knocking on it.