Mithun Chakraborty and Rajkummar Rao
Ludo director Anurag Basu talks of how Rajkummar Rao enhanced act to pay a fitting tribute to the legendary actor
Uma Ramasubramanian (MID-DAY; October 26, 2020)

Rajkummar Rao pays tribute to legendary actor Mithun Chakraborty in a film based on four individuals whose lives coincide in a metropolitan city. Anurag Basu's Netflix offering sees Rao as the Bollywood icon's fan, a part that the filmmaker says was pulled off with utmost finesse. "Raj is a versatile actor. His character's back-story is funny. During the look tests that we conducted for him, he was fond of one where he looked like Mithun Chakraborty. He particularly excelled when he performed his first scene in that avatar," says Basu, adding that Rao punched above his weight and recommended ways in which his part could be enhanced.

He points to a specific scene of the Ram-Leela to make a case for himself. "Initially, we did not have a fight sequence in that scene, but Raj was keen that we add one. When we were on set, he showed me a video of a fight breaking out at a Ram-Leela event, and we decided to incorporate it into our film."

Set to release on November 12, Ludo boasts of a stellar cast, including Abhishek Bachchan, Aditya Roy Kapur, Pankaj Tripathi, Sanya Malhotra, and Fatima Sana Shaikh.

Anurag Basu