Just a reminder: A 12-minute segment on Aishwarya Rai, entitled ‘The World’s Most Beautiful Woman?,’ airs tonight at 7pm on 60 Minutes (CBS). Here’s Apul’s post on the interview.

The press release is incredibly disingenuous, asking the questions usually done by trashy film mags:

Rai’s first movie kiss, should she do it, will be a minor scandal among her fans, especially in India… The country that gave the world the Kama Sutra, one of the oldest known sex manuals, isn’t prudish, just not into public displays of intimacy… Rai… dances delicately around the subject of screen sex. “We’ll cross the bridge when we reach it,” says Rai of the inevitable love scene in her American film future.

Kama Sutra reference, check. Desperate bid to boost viewership, check. Aishwarya’s ever-so-precious virginal mugging for Stardust, Filmfare and Cineblitz, check.

A 31-year-old actress/model will have done a hell of a lot more than a public kiss, and more power to her. No matter how much fans may confuse reel life with real life, the Britney Spears impression isn’t necessary, discretion works fine. But the fault probably lies more with the interviewers than the actress. It’s the kind of tissue-thin softball usually tossed underhand by Baba Wawa.

Update: Watch the first 2:45 of the video: mirror 1, 2; torrent. Aishwarya seemed extremely nervous, her humor strained, this is her big U.S. launch. Her answers seemed unrehearsed and forced, her giggling a touch shrill; she was like a liquored-up Cameron Diaz on Craig Kilborn, truly cringeworthy. The interviewer spent a third of the segment on ‘you’re so hot,’a third on explaining Bollywood (pretty decent — they clipped her best films) and a third on ‘why won’t you kiss on screen?’ Ahh, hard news — I thought I’d escaped the Hindustan Times, but 60 Minutes dragged me back in.

60 Minutes has the same tone as morning talk shows, a dorky, Katie-Couric-for-your-grandma aesthetic. I used to love watching the show Sunday afternoons with my dad, but the harsh light of adulthood has diminished it. Like most TV shows, they use short words and simple sentences, they talk down to their audience. Before Aishwarya, the show cooed over Google with the same script mass media has been using about tech for 25 years: they’re young, rich and eccentric, those crazy kids. I winced watching Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin trying to put together sound bites that would be modest and non-techie, I’ve been on that side of the lens. When asking about Google’s interview questions, the profiler massacred the word ‘icosahedron,’ stressing the wrong syllable, turning it over gingerly in her mouth as if it were Greek.

Which it was, originally, but still. She was proud it was a ‘technical’ word, she pounced on it for the camera like a delighted kitten. This is to be dispelled, not exalted.

Update 2: Reuters picks up the non-story.

Update 3: Here’s the Google segment.