As he prepares to step into the shoes of Kargil hero Vikram Batra for his next, Sidharth Malhotra on how prepping for action scenes vary across genres
Sonia Lulla (MID-DAY; January 18, 2019)

Over the six years that he’s been part of the industry, Sidharth Malhotra has exploited his athletic prowess just as much as he has his charm. Actioners have found their place on the actor’s resume in abundance, but Malhotra says working on his next — the biopic on Kargil hero Vikram Batra — will involve prep that isn’t restricted to physical toil alone.

“It will involve a lot of weaponry. I’m obsessed with weapons. My father had got me a pellet gun, the kind that was used in Home Alone [1990], and I was obsessed with that. So, I’m excited to try different weapons for it,” the actor tells mid-day on the sidelines of the Blenders Pride Fashion Tour, which saw him take to the ramp for Rohit Bal.

His love for athletics being evident from his Instagram posts, Malhotra doesn’t tire of prepping for actioners, given the variety that each genre offers. “For a film like [the forthcoming] Marjavaan, which is a mass entertainer, prep work is simpler since it essentially [involves] wire work. It’s not stylised in the way that Brothers [2015] was. Mass action films are [primarily] about the body language.”

Work on the biopic, he reveals, is expected to kick off in April so that the team can meet its early 2020 release. In the meanwhile, he looks forward to the May release, Jabariya Jodi, which sees him play a Patna boy who facilitates forced marriages. “I did two months of speech training, and spoke to people from Patna to learn the twang. We had actors from the region who were shooting with us, so we could throw off lines to one another. I wasn’t completely alien to it because I’ve grown up in Delhi, so the bhasha is closer [to the one used in Patna]. I also read stories and poetry from the region to understand their lehza and use of dialogues.”