Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 10, 2017)

When we meet the man behind the big belly from Delhi Belly, Kunaal Roy Kapur at an Andheri café, he’s wolfing down a salad. His new frame to accommodate his present projects — a web series that takes a dig at the skittish outlook of those in the business of social media (Going Viral), an “unconventional comedy” alongside Saif Ali Khan (Kaalakaandi), and his first lead in an upcoming supernatural thriller. About this altered shape, he quickly says, “I haven’t lost it all yet.” The reason for the transformation, he says, was “to become a healthier person”.

“People see me as a comic actor. To break out of that, there was effort needed from my end,” says the 38-year-old, who was requested by the director of his next film to shape up to slip into character. Ironically, Kapur’s most notable performance in the 2011 black comedy Delhi Belly had him shoot up the scales to 118kgs. But his much-lauded performance, he remembers, didn’t translate in sizeable projects. “By the time the film released, I had lost the weight I’d gained for the character and had also shaved my beard. So, when they called me for auditions, I didn’t match the fat bearded guy they had seen in the film and wanted to cast,” he laments.

But Kapur, who started out with theatre at 12 and even assisted Boman Irani as a photographer, says he’s never had a lull, even while he didn’t always work with big banners. Though he agrees, “In every actor’s life, there are months when you scratch your head and wonder what’s in store and for every break you get, there are 20 things that fizzle out.” He swipes his phone to add, “I have to check my own IMDB for the films I’ve done,” says the actor who made his big screen debut in the 2007 comedy Panga Na Lo — a film that conjures a disturbing memory. The actor booked first-day-first-show tickets at Metro for his entire family but on arriving at the theatre, the show was cancelled.

“It was embarrassing because old aunts had come for it too,” says Kapur who later starred in Loins of Punjab Presents, Nautanki Saala and even directed The President Is Coming (adapted from the play of the same name) — a film that “released on the fateful day of 26-11” — the night of the Mumbai terror attacks which naturally affected the film’s box office. Another promising performance that went unnoticed was the partially bald lawyer he played in Azhar last year. His curious makeover into a middle-aged Hyderabadi rendered him literally unrecognisable. But this doesn’t bother him one bit.

“I love that nobody recognized me. If I can go through my career with roles where no one recognizes me, I will be the happiest guy.” Despite scattered successes and misses, Kapur’s survival is often pegged by some as a blatant example of nepotism, given that his celebrated brothers — former UTV boss Siddharth Roy Kapur and actor Aditya Roy Kapur — have well-entrenched roots in the industry. But Roy refutes this belief. “I automatically gain a status on the basis of whose brother I am but I don’t gain any work because of it,” he says, adding that the siblings often discuss films but have never considered collaborating. “I’m not saying it won’t happen in the future but we’ve never had conversations such as — ‘this a project we should do together’ or ‘you act in it’ or ‘you produce it’.”

Ahead of his upcoming horror film The Final Exit, the actor says that he isn’t scared of the limited success the genre has garnered in India. “What’s the worst that could happen? It won’t do well. But I’ve had films which haven’t done well and I’ve survived and I’m still acting,” he says, adding that his upcoming thriller packs in “suspense, mystery and atmosphere”. “If horror is done well, it can work. But when you think horror in India, you think Ramsay, Vikram Bhatt… where bhoots come and do things.” In Delhi Belly writer Akshat Verma’s Kaalakaandi, he plays a character which cannot be billed as funny but “is put into shitty situations”. “Falling down is called slapstick because you’re laughing at a person’s pain. But when you make a person crumble and fall — through conversation or situations — it’s a version of the same.”

An alumnus of G D Somani School, Kapur dropped out of St Xavier’s College to break into TV with the coming-of-age drama Just Mohabbat. But soon, he realised the content didn’t interest him and consciously “kept away from TV” ever since. His latest web series that caricatures the life of those in digital agencies, however, is the kind he enjoys now. “It talks about the times we live in — driven by social media and online popularity — it’s frivolous and ludicrous content,” he says about the show created by comedian Anuvab Pal, adding,“It’s also a social commentary without calling attention to it.”

His interest in the space is validated by the medium’s growing audience.“Why people aren’t showing up at theatres has to do with the multiple options that they have sitting at home.” Aware of the pitfalls of disappointing the millennial internet audience, Kapur feels that while “they may be unforgiving; they always give you another opportunity”.