After starting the year with the blockbuster Pathaan, actor Manish Wadhwa is basking in the glory of Gadar 2. “I consider myself extremely fortunate that I could be a part of two of the biggest hits of this year. I’m getting so many calls from everywhere,” gushes Wadhwa.

Having played Pakistani army generals in both the films, Wadhwa asserts that it was still quite challenging to portray similar characters differently. “The era was different,” he says, adding, “General Hamid Iqbal in Gadar 2 is very desi, with a different thinking, whereas General Qadir in Pathaan is very polished and belongs to the modern era. So, while Manish Wadhwa is the same, I had to think about how these two characters would think and behave differently.”

The 51-year-old agrees that it’s “natural for audiences and filmmakers to judge that I was stereotyped”, but he thinks otherwise. Has he received offers to play the antagonist in his future projects, too? “I’ve received some scripts, but I haven’t had the time to read them. I am enjoying the success of the film and I don’t want to get distracted,” says Wadhwa.

What really helped his characters leave a mark is that he completely surrendered to his directors — Siddharth Anand (Pathaan) and Anil Sharma (Gadar 2). “I believe if you go on set with a blank slate as an artiste, you can write anything on that slate. Agar main pehle se soch ke jaunga, toh woh sahi nahin hai,” he says.

For Gadar 2, the actor was selected in the first meeting itself. “I had done the Tamil movie Shyam Singha Roy (2021). Its stunt director, Ravi Varma, showed the clips to Anil Sharma ji, who was searching for a villain. He liked it and that’s how I came on board,” he wraps up.

The La Martiniere College in Lucknow has been transformed into a battle ground for Sunny Deol’s Gadar 2. The film’s shooting is going on at a steady pace in the city with Sunny and Utkarsh Sharma filming the climax scenes of the film.

The main building Constantia of the college is being depicted as the headquarters of the Pakistan Army in the film with a Pakistani flag hoisted on one of the columns. Military jeeps have been painted khaki and junior artistes can be seen dressed in kurta-pyjama and caps to give the location a feel of Lahore, where the climax takes place.

The scene being shot these days is of Utkarsh Sharma – Jeete in the film, going to rescue his sweetheart from Pakistan and the neighbouring army capturing him. He is then punished and tied in front of a cannon to be killed. A huge crowd has gathered to watch the sentence being carried out and the area is surrounded by armed soldiers. Then someone from the crowd demands the prisoner’s last wish to be granted and Jeete says he wants to meet his father. That’s when Sunny Deol, alias Tara Singh, enters the scene and rescues his son from Manish Wadhwa, a Pakistani army general in the film and the main villain too.

“Sunny sir will be enacting a similar scene like that of pulling out the handpump in the previous one, in this film too,” informs a source from the set. “It is also going to be a very powerful scene in the sequel,” the source adds.

Meanwhile, the crew also celebrated director Anil Sharma’s birthday on Monday. A huge three-tiered cake was made for Sharma with his and his film’s pictures on it. Present for the cake cutting were Sharma’s wife. Sunny Deol, Rana Bhatia, the executive producer, and Yogesh Tripathi the local line producer, among other cast and crew of the film.