Sometimes all it takes for an actor to agree on doing a film is a one-line description. That’s what happened with Rajkummar Rao and his film Trapped, which releases later this week . It was director Vikramaditya Motwane’s simple sketch — “one guy stuck in a high rise apartment” — that did it for him. “There was so much scope in it for me to explore. I jumped at the idea,” Rao says.
Working with silence
The one-man show has given Rao plenty of time and space on screen, but came with its own set of traps. Didn’t it get lonely as a performer? Didn’t he miss the give and take with other actors? “Lots of people have asked me if I missed the co-actors because acting is also about reacting,” he says. The way out for Rao, then, was to react to the circumstances instead, to the situation he was confined in as the character Shaurya. The process worked well with his own method as an actor. “I love being in my own space. I love silences, I love pauses. That makes the whole process very internal. It’s just about you. Everything comes from within.”
So he made sure that he went through the same processes personally as Shaurya. For example, his diet underwent a drastic upheaval; he stopped eating and drinking. “I was trying to live Shaurya’s life for real also. Everything that came out [from within me] then was very pure, with a lot of truth in it.” He survived on carrots and black coffee for almost a fortnight. “It was horrible, but there is no other way I could have done it. I couldn’t have gone home and stuffed myself with food and come back the next day on the sets and pretended that I was dying of hunger,” he says. However, he is nonchalant about dieting for this cause, regarding it as just a part of his job, “There is nothing to brag about in it.”
The toughest part lay in making both the film and the character believable. And in making it accessible so that audiences can relate to the character’s journey. Rao’s biggest ally in it was the script. On the flip side, he considers himself as a collaborator of the story. As an actor, his biggest commitment is to the script. “I am a participant in communicating, in telling the story,” he asserts.
Script is king
Were there any apprehensions at all about doing the role? No, comes the pat response. “No actor who loves his or her job would have had second thoughts on a script like this or a director like Vikram,” he says. In fact, a big reason for him to do Trapped was Motwane. “I was kicked that Vikram was approaching me for a film. I have been a big fan of his since Udaan . I couldn’t have asked for anything more,” says Rao.
Filmmaker Hansal Mehta also had a gracious, unheralded role in making Shaurya a reality for Rao. Mehta was supposed to start Omerta with him around the same time, but pushed it by a month for him to complete Trapped at a stretch.
What does he have to say about industry folks noting that this current phase may well be the best for Rao? “I am a greedy actor,” he laughs in agreement. “I want to be a part of all the fantastic stories being made. Every actor would want their CV to be filled with good films. And I am happy that I am getting a chance to do all these exciting films — characters [that] are so different. There is a lot more to discover as an actor in all these films.”
Variety is key
For Rao, his films Shahid and Kai Po Che were the two turning points in his career, responsible for moulding him. Are there any films that he has been unhappy with? “I wouldn’t name them. There are couple. I wasn’t happy even while doing them. But bygones are bygones. Sometimes the story or something else may not work with the audience or with my own self.”
Does he see himself fit much better with slightly more evolved, if not entirely alternate/offbeat cinema? “My commitment is same in all my films. It’s not as though I work less hard in the so-called commercial films,” he says. In response to a query on the pressures of audience expectation, his reply is quick, “I choose to do a film because I want to do it, not by genre or expectations. There are people ready to typecast you. At least you should not do that to yourself.” He is confident that if he does an action film, he’d be convincing enough for people to accept him as an action hero. Would he do pull off a film that belongs to the slapstick genre? Yes, of course, he says in delight. “I am a big Andaz Apna Apna fan. If it was being made again I would love to do it.”
As an actor what Rao yearns for is variety. So his role in Amit Masurkar’s Newton is poles apart from Trapped . “The struggles, the conflicts, backgrounds, even the physical looks of the two characters are very different.” Having bagged the CICAE Art Cinema Award in the Forum section of Berlinale 2017, Newton now travels to the Tribeca festival and is likely to find release, at the earliest, around the middle of this year back home.
Coming up next are two “fun, entertaining, so-called commercial” films. “But as an actor, I have given whatever I could, whatever was required of me,” he says. There is Behen Hogi Teri and Bareilly Ki Barfi , which is being directed by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari who made Nil Battey Sannata . “It has songs. It revolves around three people: Ayushmann [Khurrana], Kriti [Sanon] and me. It is set in a small town in U.P. It is a light-hearted film, but it has a story; its characters are real,” says Rao.
He feels that mainstream films, even the traditional romantic ones, are going through a major change. They are becoming more and more relatable and are far from the earlier fairytales. He can see himself or people he knows in them. For instance, Queen . “My character has a major part in the story. You can’t see Queen as a film without Vijay. I thought I was contributing something very important to the story. I had a love story in Kai PoChe , I have one in Trapped .”
Rooted in reality
For him, Hindi cinema is going through an exciting phase, and he likes riding the wave. “We are going back to the roots, to the small towns which are a major part of our country, to the ordinary people.” Carrying the experience of growing up in Gurgaon, in a small town middle-class environment has stood the actor in good stead. He keeps going back to the roots — the home and family — ever so often, but discreetly. “Otherwise, it becomes like a public event with people asking for selfies. I want to be with my own people in my own space when am at home,” he says simply.
But what about returning to theatre, which is where his acting life began while studying at Delhi University? That is, in the crucial years before he went to the Film and Television Institute of India happened. He confesses that theatre was a step up the ladder to the eventual goal of cinema. But there are suggestions now to adapt Trapped for the stage. A bait that could well be worth a bite.
