In a hilarious bit, the actor recalled the time he called Lokesh Kanagaraj, shortly after the director’s acclaimed sophomore Kaithi, and enquired if he had any stories for him. “I wanted to meet him before other actors begin to line up. He said ‘yes’ and added that he was a Kamal Haasan fan. ‘Did I ask you? Did I ask you whose fan you are?” quipped Rajini, before joking that this was Lokesh’s way of informing that he does “intelligent cinema, which doesn’t have an punch dialogues.”

Rajinikanth left the crowd in splits when he teased Lokesh for giving hour-long interviews during the film’s promotions. “Nagarjuna and Aamir Khan gave some nice interviews, but I saw a two-hour interview of Lokesh. It kept going on and on. I sat and watched it, but it kept going. I paced around for a bit, and it was still going on. I napped for a bit, and guess what? It was still going on,” said the superstar. He then praised Lokesh as ‘the true hero of Coolie.’

Coolie, set to release on August 14, features Rajinikanth as Deva, who, from the trailer, seems to be a coolie labourer. During his speech, Rajinikanth shared a personal anecdote from the time he worked as a coolie before finding a job as a bus conductor. He reminisced about how once a man paid him ₹2 to load luggage. “His voice sounded familiar, and then it turned out to be a classmate whom I used to mock in college. He looked at me and said, ‘Enna aattam aadina da’,” after which he mocked the superstar for being a coolie worker. “After that, I sat and cried a lot for the first time in my life,” he added.

Coolie also stars Nagarjuna Akkineni, Upendra, Soubin Shahir, Sathyaraj and Shruti Haasan. Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan appears in a special cameo.

Said to be a standalone movie and not part of Lokesh’s celebrated Lokesh Cinematic Universe, Coolie has received an ‘A’ certificate from the Censor Board, becoming the first Rajinikanth film in 36 years to be ‘A’-rated. Kalanithi Maran produces the film under his Sun Pictures banner.