BAREILLY KI BARFI (2017)
The challenge of this upcoming romcom is that even though it is not a double role, I have to play two distinctly different personalities. While Pritam is shy, submissive and measured with his words, Vidrohi is loud and larger-than-life, full of swag and full of himself. I grew up in Gurgaon and have seen guys like the street-smart Vidrohi all my life, right from the seniors in school who would rag us minions. I also have a friend who’s a lot like Pritam so my muses are borrowed from real life. And since Pritam is a sari salesman, I even visited a showroom in Juhu for a couple of days to observe the salesmen there and learnt how to drape the sari from them.

Vidrohi was the ‘risk’ since I’m nothing like him in real life and I had never experimented with a character like him in reel life. The idea was to make him entertaining yet believable, comic but not a caricature. I hope I have made him ‘human’ and one of us. That’s is always the aim. No aliens for me.

To differentiate between the two characters, I worked on my voice, gave them different pitches. Sweet, scared Pritam is so soft-spoken, you have to strain to catch what he’s saying while loud Vidrohi makes sure everyone around hears him. Both have pronounced UP accents but that wasn’t difficult because I’ve grown up in the North and have an ear for accents. Since I was a child, I’ve been mimicking people’s accents and that came in handy. The language coach and director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari helped too.

TRAPPED (2017)
Physically, Trapped was my most taxing film as I lived on a carrot for lunch, two cups of coffee and few sips of water for the rest of the day. It lead to intense frustration and even blackouts, but there was no other way I could have done this film without it looking fake. We shot it in a linear manner so the emotional and physical graph would come naturally. And after the first five days, as the hunger pangs got unbearable, I was counting time for the torture to end. I am a big fan of survival dramas so I didn’t think twice before grabbing this role, but today, I wouldn’t wish a Trapped on anyone. Thank God for my director Vikramaditya Motwane and his mother, Deepa ma’am, who took care of me, made sure I ate or drank something sometimes.

Prep included trying out 200 pairs of spectacles and ended with me modelling my character, Shaurya, on Vikramaditya who knew he was my reference point. If Shaurya was a director, he’d be a shy, reserved Vikram.

CITYLIGHTS (2014)
Before the film rolled, I worked on losing around eight kilos through diet and exercise. We went to Rajasthan 10 days prior to the shoot. I interacted with the locals to get the diction right, grew a moustache and got my ears pierced for the first time to blend in. By the time we went on the floors, I began to feel like Deepak Singh. Now, the onus was on conveying his emotional struggle so the audience would root for him even when he failed his family. I had Hansal sir (director Hansal Mehta) for guidance. Almost 90 per cent of my characters are strugglers. That doesn’t set them apart but helps them become one with the crowd because I believe we are all strugglers at different levels. What’s important is to set a goal and work towards it.

My favourite scene is the one where Deepak comes home drunk. I don’t drink but for this one, I downed a bottle of vodka and was out of control. We were shooting on the 10th floor of an under-construction building and everyone was petrified I would slip and fall. But once the camera rolled, I was fine. (Co-star) Patralekhaa and my energies combined to leave the camera guy teary-eyed and a few frames out of focus.

SHAHID (2013)
The film came at a time when I was a hungry actor wanting to do something worthwhile. And though it was a biopic, there wasn’t much material available on the slain activist-lawyer, Shahid Azmi, apart from two pictures. It was through his younger brother Khalid that I got to know him — his upbringing, relationship with the family and goals. I also studied Islam, starting with the Quran, because Shahid was a true Muslim boy. I also visited a court for the first time and realised how different the real kachehri is. That’s when Hansal sir and I decided we wouldn’t dramatise this film. After the prep, I kept things organic. I don’t plan or rehearse, I just gather everything and start shooting.

We didn’t have money but there was a fire inside to tell Shahid’s story. While filming the last case he is working on, I improvised and interrupted my closing speech to ask for a glass of water. Later, I saw a video in which Shahid does the same. It was so surreal and yet made me feel even closer to him.

KAI PO CHE! (2013)
This is one of the most important films of my career. I had read Chetan Bhagat’s The 3 Mistakes Of My Life even before I landed the role of Govind Patel. Then too, I had connected with Govind of the three boys as I identified with his passion and drive to achieve something. In my mind, I worked out a backstory for him about his father abandoning his mother and him for a rich woman. That’s the reason his mission in life is to make money. That, along with my determination to give Govind an authetic Gujarati accent is what worked for the film and him.

LSD: LOVE, SEX, DHOKA (2010)
My first film is really close to my heart but it was a difficult, almost voyeuristic role, with scenes being shot in one take as Dibakar (director Dibakar Banerjee) didn’t want to interrupt us with ‘cuts’. There were lots of workshops but once we rolled, it was my job to make Adarsh appealing.

He’s a 20-something, good-for-nothing supermarket supervisor who plans to make a sex tape with one of the employees, catching her in a vulnerable moment, and sell it to settle his debts. I’d seen guys like him in Delhi, and the challenge was making people feel for Adarsh despite what he is doing to the girl. I did that by playing up his feelings for Rashmi and his conflicting character traits. I loved the moment just before the climax when she is crying and he has to decide whether to switch off the camera. The scene fulfilled me as an actor because people have come up to me and said that despite everything, they didn’t come away hating Adarsh. That was heartening!