Harshada Rege (BOMBAY TIMES; November 10, 2020)

Be it the brash Bhiku Mhatre in Satya or the sensitive Professor Ramchandra Siras in Aligarh, in a career spanning over 25 years, Manoj Bajpayee has played many unforgettable characters. In his upcoming film, Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari directed by Abhishek Sharma, the actor proves his versatility yet again, as he dons many looks for his role as the owner of a wedding detective agency. In a chat with BT the actor spoke about the “tedious process” of slipping into various avatars for the films, the changing face of the industry, the noise around the nepotism debate and more. Read on...

In Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari, we get to see you in many dramatic looks — from a large-sized man to a senior citizen to a woman. For an actor, are the add-ons like prosthetics and other make-up tools a helpful crutch?
Well, I can tell you that it the most tedious job for an actor when five people are working on your look, and you have to sit still for many hours. It’s a job that demands a lot of passion and patience. But when you keep the goal in mind, then you build the patience to go through it. See, one always prepares for one’s performance, but with prosthetics, saree and all those things, there are certain alterations and changes that you need to make. That is something an actor has to be prepared for.

You have been in this field for over 25 years now, do you feel that as you grow into your career, the roles get better and meatier?
Since the beginning of my career, I was very clear about what I wanted to do. If I was not getting the kind of roles I wanted, I would quietly sit at home and spend the money that I had earned from my last film. I have never been in a hurry. However, I must say that these are the times that we had all worked towards.

It’s finally happening. We are getting the kind of roles we wanted in films that are being made by talented filmmakers. They are coming up with newer stories and a different type of storytelling. Their demands are different. They want their actors to be as good as any actor in the world. We have to work hard to meet their expectations.

Today, as stories from the heartland of India have piqued the audience’s interest, do you think that the scope for actors who don’t fit into the regular muscle-trotting, gym-going category has increased?
I would say that mainstream films have always followed a very limited formula, and so, the roles in those movies have never ventured into the grey spectrum. They never cared to work on the dimensions or facets of the character hence, you didn’t require actors who were different from each other. But now, the mainstream is changing, and films are finding ways to narrate better stories, show well-etched characters and also have mainstream elements in. This is exactly what we have waited for.

Some of us, who came in the beginning, who never fitted into the commercial formula films, we had to wait, and the wait was quite long. But now, I am glad and I thank God every day when I see talented people doing a great job across mediums. Actors are getting their due, which is a relief. This is the industry that we wanted for ourselves. This is the kind of democracy we envisioned; to have an industry where you consider just talent and nothing else.

There has been a lot of talk about nepotism and the insider-outsider theory in the industry. How do you look back at the past few months of debates and discussions surrounding it?
The last seven-eight months were quite a wake-up call for the industry. Not only the film industry, but the entire country. As we are gearing up to go back to work, we all know what we need to do. We have talked about it and heard too many voices — sometimes it took the shape of a cacophony — but now it’s time to work on it and work towards having a great working atmosphere, which is very important. Enough of debates have happened and enough of noise has been created; now it’s time to work towards making this industry so great that we set an example for the world.