It’s been nine years since the first Dhoom release (2004), but it doesn’t take Uday Chopra more than a nano second to get into Ali’s shoes. His cool biker/‘tapori’ character has been the highlight of his acting career, and Uday Chopra, the younger scion of Yash Raj Films, says that while the subsequent Dhoom films were a breeze, the first wasn’t. “That’s because both Vijay (Krishna Acharya, the writer) and Sanjay (Gadhvi, the director then) didn’t want me to give prominence to the tapori part. Till then, I had thought it’d be pretty much easy to play Ali, in spite of me having played only these cool urban characters till that time. I asked for help from Mayur Puri (Sanjay’s Assistant Director then, now a writer) who put me in touch with Asif, who is popularly known as Asif Gaiety because he hangs outside Gaiety cinema in Bandra. When he came, I told him the purpose of our meeting — that I wanted to play a tapori, hence I would need to know him a little. I was bowled over by his answer, “Main tapori nahi hai” (I am not a tapori). That provided me the premise for Ali. He may be the biggest tapori around, but hey, he thinks he is the hero. For him, Dhoom was actually ‘Ali’, and thus it is ‘Ali 2’ and now ‘Ali 3’. He is the coolest person he knows!
A standalone filmWhile the sequel to Dhoom released within two years, Dhoom 3 is releasing six years after that (December 20) with the writer of the previous films at the helm and Sanjay Gadhvi out of the picture. “Maybe we should get them out faster”, says Uday, whose brother Aditya Chopra is closely associated with the series as it was the first action film from Yash Raj Films after 16 years. “But we don’t treat Dhoom as a mere franchise. It’s closer to us than that. We wouldn’t have made it even now if we didn’t have a good story. Dhoom 3 is a standalone film; so while you may say that the memories of the first two have diminished, you may be right, but this one will be able to create a unique impression. It could have been called ‘The Chase’ and not Dhoom for all you know and it would stand.”
With Yash Raj’s Hollywood production arm in his control, Uday seems to have peacefully come to terms with his failure in acting. “I can’t say I didn’t get my due. It’d be foolish. You get what you deserve and I didn’t deserve it. I wouldn’t say I was not talented, just that nothing worked. I tried making my debut in a film with an ensemble cast so that the attention would be equally divided, but it didn’t work. Then Dhoom and Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi (2002) did well, and there seemed to be hope again! But thereafter, it was all downhill. I wrote Pyaar Impossible (2010) to look as geeky and unthreatening as could be, so that people would like me, but nope! I really feel that people resent it when someone seems to get it ‘easy’. No grudges on that front though. Every person in India has to work hard to get ahead. So yes, when you ask if being the producer’s son carried a negative bias, it did. But then I would have still made my debut with Yash Raj Films. Why would a businessman’s son go around seeking a job when he has the work at home? But this analogy is difficult to explain when you are unsuccessful,” he reasons.
Dad’s demise, a huge blowHappy in the space that he has created in Los Angeles, “one suite, two cabins, a head of department and a legal team, much like my father’s frugal beginnings in Bollywood,” Uday says he is a forward-looking person. “I try to put the hate behind, but I totally resent not being able to work with my dad. I was begging him and Adi (Aditya) to write a role for me in Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012) and they kept saying they would. I even told them that I’d be happy to play that miniscule role of Shah Rukh’s friend too, but as they say, it was not to be. I got too busy in LA and thought I’d do some other film with him. No one had expected he would pass away. It was a huge blow and I have only just gotten over it.”
Uday has four productions underway: the Nicole Kidman-Tim Roth starrer Grace of Monaco (releasing March 2014), The Longest Week (previously announced in 2013) with Olivia Wilde and Jason Bateman, movie adaptation of the 2012 Chris Greenhalgh novel Seducing Ingrid Bergman and a soon-to-be-announced female-based thriller set in India with an entire Hollywood cast and crew.
