Being the nice guy

He has always been the nice, sweet guy, as Vicky Donor or as the slightly caddish lout of Dum Laga Ke Haisha, who still retained a basic innocence. What’s more, he has almost always done light romantic movies.

Ayushmann Khurrana is now set to release two more such films spaced a fortnight apart — the slice-of-life romantic comedies Bareilly Ki Barfi and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan. Both films are helmed by film-makers of repute — Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari directs the former from a script by her husband Nitesh Dangal Tiwari, while the latter is produced and overviewed by Aanand L Rai and directed by R S Prasanna from the South, based on his Tamil original Kalyana Samayal Saadham.

Our first obvious question when we meet is, therefore: when is he going to turn ‘serious’ in films? Ayushmann laughs as he answers, “My next film with Sriram Raghavan is a very serious subject and a thriller. I play a grey role in the film. I too want to do something different, you know.”

Aspirations galore

Would he like to go the whole hog and do a negative role? “Of course!” he replies. “It would be a welcome change from the simple, sweet characters I have been doing. I had done this role of Ashwathama in the play Andha Yug. It was grey and savage. I enjoyed doing it and won awards for it too.”

Of course, his characters in his two upcoming films are still nuanced differently from what he has done to date. “In Bareilly…, I am playing an aggressive, manipulative person for the first time, an alpha male, unlike the beta or gamma male with an erectile dysfunction that I am in Shubh Mangal Saavdhan!” he laughs.

What’s with his penchant for such films as Shubh…, for he started his film career with Vicky Donor? He laughs and shoots off a ‘punny’ answer: “It’s an organic transition.” At the trailer launch of the same film, he had quipped in rather gross fashion, that his excessive sperm donation in his debut film had led to this ‘problem’ now. Reminded of that, he laughs again and adds, “Yes, the two films have some basic similarities, but they are poles apart in the thoughts behind them.”

In Bareilly..., he tries to manipulate the character of the other, less-educated hero, Rajkummar Rao. How were their reel and real equation? “In real life, we became instant friends. On screen, co-stars like him raise the calibre of a film and its dramatic and entertainment quotient,” sums up Ayushmann. “In fact, this is the first time I have worked in a film with a contemporary lead actor, so there was a lot of give and take, but no stress.”

As an actor, Ayushmann found nothing difficult in shooting both films with an overlap. As an explanation, Ayushmann repeats an advice he got from a leading film-maker that he really values. He told the actor, “Be yourself in your films. Whatever is the extension of your personality, you should portray that until the time you yourself change as a person.”

Says Ayushmann about this, “For many actors, it is not so easy to portray this. But I am a natural actor. And I am also an anchor and a radio presenter, which has made me a natural performer. I am not a method actor at all. So in that sense, things were not difficult with both these films.”

We move to the current craze for small-town, real and high-concept films. Does not that also, however, engender caricature-like representations of people from such regions?

“Not at all,” he replies affably. “My director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari and her husband and writer Nitesh-sir believe in realism. Ashwiny is culturally aware. She is a Tamil Brahmin born and brought up in Mumbai’s South Indian-and Maharashtrian-dominated area of Chembur. She then got exposed to Uttar Pradesh when she married Nitesh-sir.”

Notes Ayushmann, “Because of this, she has a great connection with all three communities. And since she is a very nice person, she is fun to work with and believes in incorporating authentic touches from the regions. Her school of thought will not support caricatures. Ashwiny has shown how brilliant she is with her first film Nil Battey Sannata. And this one is a completely different subject.”