Jaideep Ahlawat on working with his screen protégé and hitting the right notes as ‘strict yet compassionate’ Khalid Mir
Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; May 15, 2018)

It’s no mean feat to hold your own in a heroine centric film that is headlined by Alia Bhatt and also features talented actors such as Vicky Kaushal and Shishir Sharma, among others. According to Jaideep Ahlawat, who plays the protagonist’s mentor Khalid Mir in Meghna Gulzar’s espionage-thriller Raazi, the role required considerable prep. “Khalid is a strict yet compassionate man in the 1970s and also around 15 years older than me. I had to put on weight and learn ‘Hindustani’. It was also important to get the psyche right. I read up on Indian politics and the workings of intelligence agencies like ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) back then,” informs the FTII alumnus who was first noticed as the fearless Shahid Khan in Anurag Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur.

Then, there were workshops in combat-training before the shoot that helped him understand why someone like Mir had to let go of emotions. “He has made a lot of sacrifices in his career and lost a lot. He doesn’t show his feelings anymore because he believes they are detrimental to his job. But somewhere, he has a soft spot for Sehmat (Alia’s character), or else he wouldn’t have pointed out to her father that she is just a 20-year-old girl who has no idea about being a spy,” Jaideep explains.

Ask him about the toughest scene he had to do in the film and he recalls a sequence involving Sehmat, in which she screams at him, saying, “I want to leave before I become like you.”

“It was a particularly intense scene but Meghna knew exactly what she wanted. We canned it in an hour-and-half and everyone fell silent after that,” he reveals.

Shooting in the Valley was challenging but pleasant. “The locals were welcoming and even invited us to a local Sufi music concert. We shot in Srinagar, Doodhpathri and Pahalgam under sub-zero temperatures. Connectivity was a problem but the shoot went smoothly,” he informs.

And what was it like sharing screen space with Alia’s mother, Soni Razdan, who also plays her mom on screen? “Soni ji is sweet, calm and exudes nazaaqat,” he says, going on to add that Alia deserves to be a star because “she has deep understanding of the script and characters at a young age.”

“She is open to everything… from suggestions to combat-training. Alia is greedy as an actor because she wants to better herself each time,” Jaideep signs off.