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“Unlocking” has an added, different connotation for Abhishek Bachchan. Version 2.0 of the actor is on a prolific streak, lining up releases at a time when avenues of entertainment have narrowed down. On November 12, Bachchan will match his wits against “one of the most talented co-stars”, child actor Inayat Verma, in Anurag Basu’s next directorial venture Ludo on Netflix. He plays a petty criminal trying to reconcile with his daughter after his release from prison, but it’s his bond with another girl that changes him. The “instinctive director who does not want something that’s studied” made Bachchan feel like he was back in acting school; doing trust exercises, believing in the film-maker’s vision, and going with the flow.
“That’s the scary thing to do – to take that leap of faith,” says the actor.
It’s been an ironically busy time for Bachchan, with just two weeks of shoot left for his next film, Bob Biswas; and about five projects lined up for 2021. On November 20, the next season of the Indian Super League will begin in Goa, in which his co-owned football team Chennaiyin FC is one of the most successful franchises. Bachchan’s presence won’t be as visible this year at the ISL though, given the pandemic, bio-bubbles, fan-free stadiums and whatever else that the most annoying phrase “new normal” entails.
Adding to an eventful 2020, Bachchan also tested Covid-positive in July, along with his father Amitabh, wife Aishwarya and daughter Aaradhya. From being locked down at home like the rest of the country, he went into quarantine in a hospital, an isolation of a different kind for an actor who was just beginning to emerge from a professional sabbatical of two years.
If Bachchan is making up for lost time, he’s doing it rapidly. After Housefull 3 in June 2016, his next release was two years later with Manmarziyaan in September 2018, before his first web series Breathe: Into the Shadows this July. The break between the two movies and a deliberate recalibration of his career has rekindled in him a desire to work against the grain, shake off some complacency and change the narrative that his career has so far taken.
“I got lucky. All these projects were completed as we headed into lockdown. Now that things are opening up, they’re all coming out,” he explains.
It’s been two decades since his debut with JP Dutta’s Refugee, during which time Bachchan has worked with some of the best directors in the industry, survived a brutally critical ecosystem and strained to break out of the tall shadow his famous father casts. He’s done this with a likeable nonchalance, with the kind of self-deprecating humour that comes to someone who is self-aware. The first trailer of Ludo has a sequence with Verma that’s typical of Bachchan’s sardonic sense of humour, as he negotiates a ransom demand with help from his young hostage.
The screen is grainy, giving the impression that he may be sitting in a lowly lit basement, like the captives of Breathe. Dressed in a white round-necked T-shirt, sporting a moustache grown for his role in The Big Bull, acquired by Disney+ Hotstar, he has just started working on the promotions of his upcoming ventures. He is articulate, thoughtful about his answers, and is paradoxically youthful and old-fashioned. He supports Chelsea in the English Premier League, follows the NBA, co-owns a Pro Kabaddi League team (Jaipur Pink Panthers) and, in a rare display of good manners for a movie star, graciously walked this interviewer to the door when we met last year at his Juhu office.
Bachchan’s debut in 2000 came with a big-ticket film-maker of the time, but his subsequent releases underwhelmed at the box office. His fresh-faced innocence and easy-going demeanour made him suited for ensemble casts and light-hearted romances. But in his early years, it seemed like there was a gap between promise and delivery, as if Bachchan was holding back.
His breakthrough role came with the fiery Lallan Singh in Mani Ratnam’s Yuva in 2004 – he went on to make two more films with the South Indian auteur. A significant couple of years followed for Bachchan, who saw box-office success with Dhoom, lifted a slacking Phir Milenge with a late appearance, played a crook in the joyous caper Bunty Aur Babli, collaborated with Ram Gopal Varma on Sarkar and played Rani Mukerji’s jilted husband in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. Bachchan turned producer with Paa (2009), forayed into some forgettable projects, before he felt like he needed a break.
“I was dissatisfied with the way I was working,” he says. “The work was great, the money was even better. But, maybe I was in a comfortable rut. There were films in which the onus was on someone else. I didn’t like that. I pressed the pause button, and re-evaluated, to come back to do the work I wanted to.”
The 44-year-old watches a lot of his own films, perhaps more so during the lockdown, when he didn’t want to be one of those learning a new skill. “I see them not out of vanity,” he says, laughing, “but like homework. I make a lot of notes on how to improve. I have stacks of notebooks filled with how I could have done a scene better.”
The wonderful thing about being an actor who continues to grow, he adds, is that every time you view something you’ve done in the past, you find something new you could have changed. He wishes that in Yuva, for example, there had been more ease in his dialogue delivery. “Because Lallan was laid-back but fiery, a juxtaposition of opposites; he has an easy, languid body language that can snap in a heartbeat. I wish his language could have reflected that as well.”
He is happy to have taken the plunge into streaming services that requires certain things to be done differently compared to cinema. In Amazon Prime’s Breathe, he had 12 episodes to get into the subtext, layers and complexities of the character, a psychiatrist whose daughter has been kidnapped. “Your performance can be far more nuanced,” he says.
“In cinema, you have to be more efficient because you don’t have the luxury of time. In a web series, you have time but not the luxury to bore your audience, because it takes one button and they are gone.”
He is not sure if he would do a character as dark as in Breathe for a movie, because he feels that even though the lines between cinema and streaming are blurring, there are still some distinctions. The web allows an actor to present audiences with a new facet of themselves, says Bachchan.
He compares the advent of streaming services to when cinema first came in, allowing actors used to physical performances on stage, to do something more intimate. “Because suddenly you were right here,” says Bachchan, moving closer to his Zoom screen.
“On stage, if I have to react to someone who’s suddenly come over here, I have to do that,” he says, recoiling in mock shock. “So everybody in the audience can make out. In cinema, I can just do that,” he adds, looking sideways without moving his head, “and it’s enough.”
What he does on the big screen, however, never seems enough to satisfy his critics and trolls. There is a convenient narrative that Bachchan is successful only because of his father, ignoring his work over 20 years with film-makers like Ashutosh Gowariker, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Rohan Sippy and now Anurag Basu, among others. It comes up often, an easy tool for attacks, which he sometimes responds to graciously. In September, when Bachchan shared his excitement about cinemas opening up, faceless handles reacted in the kind of cruel way that social media allows them to mow down celebrities.
“But aren’t you still gonna be jobless?” someone asked. “That, alas, is in your (the audiences) hand. If you don’t like our work, we won’t get our next job. So we work to the best of our abilities and hope and pray for the best,” he wrote back.
Perception is one thing, optics is another and numbers are the complete truth, he adds. “I know when my films were not doing well; I know the films I was replaced from, the films that could not get made, that started and didn’t have the budgets because I was not bankable at that point... Here you have Mr Amitabh Bachchan’s son. Oh, he is born with a silver spoon. He has got his break easily because of who he is and I will agree to that.”
As an impressionable mind earlier in his career, when he heard this consistently, he started to believe that he was surviving only because of his privilege, especially when he was not doing well. Once he started finding a foothold in the industry, he realised that it’s not healthy to let that negativity affect him.
He pauses for a moment and with a hint of a grin, says, “Listen man, the fact is, he has never picked up the phone on anyone. He’s never made a film for me. On the contrary, I have produced a film for him, called Paa.”
He plans to revive his production company, Saraswati Entertainment, after getting his acting career back on track, and is confident that he is on the right path. The revived Abhishek Bachchan doesn’t have any dream role to accomplish. “Shah Rukh [Khan] told me before I became an actor: Always remember, your favourite role should be the one you are doing at that point.”
“Because if it’s not, why are you doing it.”
Photo: Manasi Sawant
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