As told to Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; April 2, 2018)

I trained in football for Vivek Agnihotri’s sports drama Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal which also featured John Abraham, Arshad Warsi and Bipasha Basu among others. We had a coach who would teach us the technique and body language and that made a huge difference on-screen. You are eventually faking it but the audience has to believe that what they are watching is real. So even in the simplest of sequences when the ball comes rolling to you, you should know how to flick it to another player.

We shot at a club in London but before the shoot, we would practice at St. Andrew’s ground in Mumbai. Even during the shoot, we would play after pack up just for fun and soon I began to enjoy the game. I played the coach, Tony Singh, and didn’t require as much training as the others but I was diligent because onscreen, your eyes reflect your confusion. I sat through recordings of matches and observed how coaches gestured with instructions to players from the dug-out, laying the law down when they didn’t do what they said in the dressing room and also how they argued with the referee over a decision. I wanted to be an authentic coach on screen.

I learnt scuba diving for Happy New Year. In one sequence, we had to dive underwater without a tank and had a coordinator from UK who taught us breathing techniques. He’d strap a knots and crosses pad to his arm and when we reached the bottom of the pool, he’d make us play the game so we would get involved. When we felt the lack of oxygen, we’d tap him on the shoulder and he would give us a pipe. We’d suck in a lungful of breath and continue playing the game.

Don: The Chase Begins had a car chase shot in Langkawi which required me to drive while blinded by laundry hanging on a clothesline. Initially, they put a mask of my face on a stunt driver so it would look like I was driving. But Haji was a small guy and the eye-openings on the mask were coming down to his cheeks and the lip slit falling below his chin. Since the mask didn’t work Haji taught me a few tricks so I could pull off the scene on my own. That was my brush with stunt driving.

In 3 Idiots, I played an ambidextrous professor and practiced writing with both hands. That skill is of no use to me today but Virus liked showing off that he is a genius and so I had to learn it. I also had to learn how to stride through the corridors of a college looking like a king. As part of my prep, I’d dress up in character, enter a real class and observe what was happening. People would wonder what I was doing but I needed to inculcate that authority and arrogance in my walk.

In Rajkumar Hirani’s Lage Raho Munna Bhai, I played a sardar from Mumbai, Lucky Singh, whom I modelled myself on six sardars from Lamington Road. There are lots of spare part shops there and I’d sit there and make videos. I learnt how they dressed and behaved, suddenly breaking into Marathi without getting into the “Balle balles” and “Oyes”. One day, one of the sardars insisted I should also observe how they hung out with friends so I went with them to beer and fish restaurants in Sion- Koliwada and also watched them do seva in gurudwaras.


Boman Irani in stills from Don: The Chase Begins, Happy New Year, Lage Raho Munnabhai and Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal