It is not often that Aamir Khan finds himself on the other side of star admiration. The rare occasion came on Monday, when Khan was seen in a freewheeling conversation with British actor Ian McKellen at the Tata Theatre, NCPA.
The chat was the premiere event of the newly launched Jio MAMI Film Club, a branch of the Mumbai Film Festival in association with the British Council and the NCPA.
The two-hour-long session saw the legend talk about the writer with the largest number of credits in IMDB, his experiences as an actor before and after coming out. And how Shakespeare ought to be experienced.
The evening ended with McKellen performing a soliloquy from a play on Thomas More, said to be written by Shakespeare. It was a powerful statement as the soliloquy is an argument for the humane treatment of those who are forced to seek asylum on being expelled from their homeland.
Meeting ground
McKellen and Khan may belong to two different countries with two vastly different cinema cultures. But as the session proceeded, it became clear how artistes have the same highs, doubts and insecurities.
At one point, as Khan brought up how he never understood why he is tagged as a method actor when all he does is try to get into the head of the character, McKellen joined him.
“There are people who are actors from the time they are in the cradle. I never thought that I was a naturally gifted actor. I had to work on my craft by learning and observing,” he said. [Later on in the open questionand-answer session, he said, “You have to be genuinely interested in other people and how they think.”]
As McKellen spoke about his early days of local theatre in North England, where he reluctantly acted in trite productions of Agatha Christie stories and musicals, it brought Khan back the memories of his days in theatre: “I spent the initial days in the backstage of this very venue with a Gujarati theatre group. One day, when one of the actors fell ill I finally got my chance to act, but in a language I didn’t know.”
In attendance were a select audience that included some personalities from the Hindi film industry including Kangna Ranaut, Sonam Kapoor, and Rajkummar Rao. When the session was opened to the audience for questions, Kapoor and Rao was among those who participated with the enthusiasm of a fan.
Khan, who also found himself on a stage where he was not the biggest star, took the opportunity to ask a few things about the craft.
When he asked him about how to deal with a bad day during the shooting of a film, McKellen shared some valuable lessons. “When I enter the stage, I feel at home. I have seen professional actors vomit a bucket because of stage fright. I’d ask myself why are they doing it, then? One way I look at it is making the character spend time with yourself and you spend time with the character. It’s a partnership.”
Challenges as a gay actor
Another interesting part of the evening was the thespian talking about the challenges he faced as a gay actor. He is a living example that debunks the myth that gay actors have more male fans than women. “I remember receiving a letter from a female fan saying how heartbroken she was after I came out. That she thought she couldn’t treat me as a sexual object anymore. But then she ended the letter saying that she will continue to do so because it’s all a fantasy anyway.”
He also pointed out how he avoided romantic roles all his life because he just didn’t know how to get into “a territory he knows nothing about. That’s how I ended up playing villains and wizards,” he joked, referring to his roles as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and as Magneto in the X-Men series.
There was a fundamental difference he felt as an actor after he came out. “My acting became less a disguise and more a revelation after that.” He also took a dig at the irony that India still follows the archaic colonial law of viewing homosexuality as something evil and western.
“Well, why don’t you have a look at one of your statues?”
On Shakespeare
“I have been pulled up for saying this before but I will say it again. The worst way to be introduced to Shakespeare is by reading him in textbooks within the four walls of the school, read by teachers most of who don’t understand the subject very well. It’s easier to learn Shakespeare when actors perform, experts, people like me who spend their entire lives studying his work.”
Although he finds the language old-fashioned, McKellen said that what makes Shakespeare relevant is his understanding of basic human nature. Shakespeare could be fantastical and exaggerated but it’s the conflicts of the human heart that we all identify with. “You can’t play Macbeth unless you suffer within; have that agony and guilt which leads to a miserable marriage and miserable country out of which no good can come out. And to know that you are capable of murder or jealousy of that intensity tells us that we are all capable of doing the worst things, it is all contained within us. So don’t go pointing fingers at somebody else.”
Better prep please
As enlightening and enjoyable the session was, one wishes though that Khan had been better prepared as an interviewer. He was caught offguard several times in the face of McKellen’s quick-witted answers.
Perhaps, he was uncomfortable in his role as an interviewee or distracted by the need to take a loo break.
