Batting on a factual wicket

After 13 years in Bollywood, Emraan Hashmi plays a real-life character in a Hindi film for the first time

Azhar, for Emraan Hashmi, has not just been about playing a cricketing idol but also getting better at the game of cricket.

ou haven’t ever played a real character yet have you? We begin by asking Emraan Hashmi about what seems distinctive to us about his upcoming film Azhar . The film is based on the life of former Indian cricket star and captain Mohammad Azharuddin. Hashmi confirms that it is his first fact-based film when it comes to Bollywood. But an international co-production, Danis Tanovic’s Tigers (2014), also had Hashmi play a real-life person, a pharmaceutical salesman from Pakistan.

Real challenges

“I would call

Azhar a semi-biopic,” says Hashmi. It’s not a documentary like the forthcoming film on Sachin Tendulkar,

Sachin: A Billion Dreams . “Our film is not by the book. We have taken liberties,” says Hashmi; the inclusion of song ’n’ dance for instance.

However, playing real-life characters has its challenges for an actor, he thinks. An actor can take more creative liberties with fictional roles. “There are hundred different ways of approaching the character and all of them can be right considering there is no reference other than the script.” But it gets difficult when you have to play someone everyone knows, whose body language, cricketing career, professional as well as personal life have all been under intense media glare and scrutiny. Yet Hashmi didn’t even have to think for a second before saying yes when Ekta Kapoor from Balaji Motion Pictures approached him with the concept: “I have been a fan of Azhar. Also the drama in his life lends itself to a good cinema experience. Moreover, I like playing such layered, complex characters on screen.”

The nephew of Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt, Hasmi started off as an assistant director in their own banner, Vishesh Films, and worked with Vikram Bhatt on Kasoor and Raaz .

Later, Hashmi auditioned for and made his acting debut in Mahesh Bhatt’s

Footpath . He shot to fame with

Murder , opposite Mallika Sherawat. A string of successful films like

Gangster ,

Jannat ,

Raaz: The Mystery Continues ,

Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai ,

Murder 2 and

The Dirty Picture followed. Most of them were for the Bhatt camp. Whether it was Mallika or Sonal Chauhan, Hashmi smooched most of his heroines on screen, earning him the tag of serial-kisser. Over the years, he has been the quintessential flawed hero, someone with whom the man on the street can connect. His on-screen outings have been all about characters with shades of grey and black.

Offbeat roles

Things took a turn with Dibakar Banerjee’s Shanghai , based on Greek writer and diplomat Vassilis Vassilikos’s famous book Z . It took Hashmi out of his comfort zone. Playing Joginder Parmar, a small-town photographer and journalist who also shoots wedding videos and porn films to make ends meet, Hashmi converted the more discerning viewers into his admirers.

Then there was new experimental stuff; Kannan Iyer’s supernatural thriller Ek Thi Daayan , where he played a delusional magician; Raj Kumar Gupta’s comic caper, Ghanchakkar .

Does he stand by his choice of these “hatke” films? “If I were to turn back time I will still do all of them all over again.” Azhar , he thinks, would be an addition to that list. The industry is hoping that it will also rake in the moolah at the box office. More so because in the last couple of years most of Hashmi’s mainstream films have come a cropper: Raja Natwarlal , Ungli , Mr X and Hamari Adhoori Kahani .

The highs and lows

Azhar is not a hagiography; it delves into all aspects of its protagonist’s life, the highs and the lows. It chronicles his life in Hyderabad and dreams of becoming a cricketer; the record start with three test centuries; his days as the captain; and the match-fixing scandal that turned him from a living legend to a fallen idol. The match-fixing controversy has figured in Hashmi’s filmography. His Jannat was about the same theme, but it was primarily a love story. “In Azhar, it is a major chapter of the protagonist’s life. It snatched the game away from him,” says Hashmi. The film is also about his much-in-news romantic liaisons. Prachi Desai plays his first wife Naureen, and Nargis Fakhri is the on-screen Sangeeta Bijlani, his second wife. “But the film doesn’t try to be judgmental nor does it sway the viewer into taking a stand,” Hashmi says.

It took six months to flesh out the script. Azharuddin himself shared people, issues and incidents with the writers that even the media would not have been privy to. And for three months he trained Hashmi in cricket so that he could get as close to his game as possible. “From a below-average player, I am now a decent cricketer,” says Hashmi.

Up next is a film far removed from cricket, Raaz 4 , a tried-and-tested formula horror flick from the Bhatt camp for his devoted fans. The franchisee has been failure-proof till now. “I’d like to be known as both an actor and a star,” he says. This year, with the two films, he hopes he will be.

Mohammad

Azharuddin trained Emraan Hashmi

in cricket for

three months