Rachana Dubey (BOMBAY TIMES; January 31, 2018)

Interviewing actors can sometimes be a tricky job; especially when the subject doesn’t believe in censoring his words. In today’s day and age, Naseeruddin Shah represents the endangered species of celebrities, who unabashedly speak their mind, endorse frank thoughts and indulge in self-deprecation. In a conversation with BT, the actor delves into what makes Akshay Kumar’s choices smart, the insatiable desire for stardom that’s common in the industry and why hits and flops have never decided the course of his career. Excerpts:

You will soon be seen in Neeraj Pandey’s upcoming film, Aiyaary. The last time you collaborated with him was for his debut, A Wednesday, which was a decade ago…
Yes, Neeraj didn’t need me all these years. He found Akshay Kumar (laughs!)

Well, they have delivered some good films together…
I’m not denying that. Akshay is a smart guy, he was intelligent enough to realise that the audience had seen enough of his acrobatics and he has to change. He has done some decent movies in recent times and grown as an actor.

In one of your earlier interviews, you had mentioned that casting a star in a realistic role doesn’t work. Looking at Akshay’s line-up of films in the last few years, would you change that stance?
No, I still stand by what I had said. Airlift and Jolly LLB 2 succeeded, but I do think that those people, whose orientation into acting is as a star, find it difficult to move away from stardom. Most of them are not real even in their real lives. Only someone like Mr Bachchan (Amitabh Bachchan) with exceptional skills can manage that. His orientation into cinema was as an actor and not as a star. Stardom for him came much later. That’s the reason I was impressed with Akshay, because after having been a star for so long, he could impart authenticity to the roles he has played lately. He picks relevant topics. Varun Dhawan is also pretty good at what he does and is hard working. Alia Bhatt, to me, is an exception. She was crying a bit much in her first film, but that girl is something else. Girls like her, Kalki Koechlin and Swara Bhasker are among the finest actresses we have today.

But Alia, like several others brought up in the industry, has found a lot of support from the fraternity’s big-wigs, which actresses like Kalki and Swara lack…
(Cuts in) This industry is a pretty incestuous place. It doesn’t work for everyone. You need to have the talent for someone to back it. If one doesn’t have the ability and the drive to do well, the backing is of no use. It’s terrific that girls like Swara and Kalki, despite not being embraced by the industry, are doing well. They must not hanker to become stars.

Do you think that most actors eventually want to become stars?
Everyone wants to become a star. There is no doubt about that, but you have to outgrow that phase. When I was 20, even I wanted to be a star. Eventually, when I went to drama school, I was sure I won’t be dancing around trees. And what do you know? The next thing I was doing was dancing around trees. It was thrust upon me. I wanted commercial success very badly and I never got it, but it didn’t kill me. It hurt me, but I realised my strength is elsewhere. The sooner you realise it, the better it is. I realised it after my first song-and-dance role, but I continued to do it for some more films after that. I finally cracked the naach-gaana formula with The Dirty Picture. Thirty years too late?

What do you think of actors like Rajkummar Rao and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who started out with small roles in big films and have now begun to make waves as leading men in commercial cinema?
It’s great that actors like them are getting such films. I think Irrfan Khan has also handled his career very well. I was a tad afraid when he did something with Rakhi Sawant in the past, but look at his choices now. Rajkummar and Nawaz’s success gladdens my heart, but I also have my apprehensions. Will they continue to back the kind of films that have brought them this far? Or will they jump the ship and do the Rs 100-crore movies? That’s a choice they have to make because it’s difficult to straddle both worlds. Nawaz is becoming a tad repetitive, but I still look forward to his films.

Over the last two-three years, you’ve restricted yourself to fewer films — some like Irada (2017) which failed at the box office, Nude (yet to release), which has run into controversies, and Welcome Back (2015), which got a lot of flak. So, what keeps you going?
No one watched Irada and it wasn’t a good film. Nude, I thought, was an important film and that the situation of these women must be highlighted as they lead a tragic life. Ravi Jadhav (director) also made Natrang, which was a beautiful movie. Through the last year, I did very little work — Nude, a Gujarati film called Dhuh and a small role in Aiyaary. I didn’t feel like doing the rest of the work that was offered. It wasn’t interesting.

There aren’t too many actors who say that they have done a bad film. Like they say, there’s some audience for every film...
Sure. Some people also told me that Zinda Jala Doonga (1988) was great. People couldn’t stop raving about Karma, which I can’t stand. So, a few people did say that Irada’s subject was good and the acting was fine, but it was a dreadfully-made film. The directors (Aparnaa Singh and Nishant Tripathi) knew nothing about their job. I lost hope for that film while shooting it. When I work on films like this, I do it in the hope that it’s an important film and a good subject. But it’s like the throw of the dice: it may turn out to be Irada or A Wednesday. I did just one scene for Zoya’s film (Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara), because I like her and the script. You can have different reasons for doing different things.

What was your reason to work in a film like Welcome Back?
There were millions of reasons to do that film. Why did you have to watch it? The reason these films get made is that they end up making money at the box office. What do you do about that? I enjoyed working with Anees Bazmee, though some people don’t like him as much. So many actors, cars, camels and dancers in the middle of a desert and yet, he was in control. You need some ability to do that.

Often, decisions to make a film’s sequel are driven by commerce. Is that the reason one might never see another edition of Ishqiya, though there were many who liked the film?
The second one (Dedh Ishqiya) failed at the box office, so Ishqiya may not have another sequel. What else other than money can drive one to make a sequel here? Unless you are Francis Ford Coppola, creative satisfaction is not the reason you back a sequel that didn’t make money the last time around. And here, there are many Francis Fraud Coppolas.

But lately, a lot of small, concept-driven films seem to have worked with the audience. What do you make of that?
It’s become easy to make films with smaller budgets, but releasing them is still a cumbersome task. There are some 35 films of mine which are rotting somewhere. I’m sure when people ask, ‘Hero kaun hai?’ and they’re told ‘Naseer’, they know where to look. Coffin Maker has been in the cans for more than four years now. So, money makes the mare go around. A Wednesday released because the producers saw money in it. Otherwise, despite its content, it would never have released.

Doesn’t this situation frighten you as an artiste?
Doing the work is more important than these things. I did a commercial hit like Tridev, but it did nothing to my market value, or my attitude, or the movies I did after that. I wasn’t flooded with offers even after Mohra’s success. Instead, I had a steady stream of roles that no one would do, because people felt I can deliver the goods. Not that my name adds anything to a project, but the failure or success of my film doesn’t make any difference to me either. I did Welcome Back, but after that no offers man! And I’m fine that way. My career has gone off very smoothly. No turning points, no sudden showers of fame and money and no sudden dips. The best part is that I don’t need to lose my sleep over how my next film will do.