Sushant Singh Rajput on how playing MS Dhoni on screen changed his vision of the game
Sneha Mahadevan (DNA; March 27, 2015)

From lead actor on a television show to Indian skipper on screen, Sushant Singh Rajput has come a long way. Playing Mahendra Singh Dhoni can unnerve anyone, but Sushant is a picture of calm.

Intimidated? “I’m not,” he insists, “I’m not looking at anything until I wrap up my work on the film. I only get scared once it’s all done.”

He explains the process behind his craft. “I could see all that I wanted to understand in the story and found it very intriguing. That’s also exactly what happened with Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! I had the most five obvious references already in place, but I wanted to go beyond that. Learning the way how one talks, or mannerisms — are all very easy things to do. The complicated thing to do is to stop the momentum of your thinking and begin to believe that the character we are playing isn’t us — the real self. I’m doing this film to just understand the character. Not to look like him or because of the fear of being compared, it’s just done for the sheer excitement of understanding someone else’s psyche. If there are frames and mannerisms that remind me that this is me, Sushant the person, I have failed.”

While Sushant has always been a cricket fanatic, his outlook toward the game changed when he started practising to play Dhoni. He reminds you, “I played a failed cricket coach in Kai Po Che, too. Then you take a step back and realise that the things you’ve been doing all your life can be done in different ways. That is surreal. I’ve played cricket all my life. For the last six months, I practised everyday trying to understand how the game is played. And when I play now, it is a completely different feeling. I am watching the ball like I have never watched it before.”