For Meenakshi Seshadri Mysore, Meri Jung is “undoubtedly one of the milestones” of her acting career. “The film has been an iconic addition to Bollywood commercial cinema, and even after 40 years, people continue to like it,” she tells us.

She was still new to films when this Hindi drama, which turns 40 today, came her way. “I was very new in the industry back then and had already done the film Hero (1983) with (director) Subhash Ghai,” she says. Because of this connection, she “came on board later” for Meri Jung.

Interestingly, her role was originally different. “The original script had the leading lady playing the role of a doctor who needs legal help in a poison case. However, the director wanted a glamorous lead, and so my character was sketched as the sister of the doctor, a role later played by (actor) Beena Banerjee.”

Anil Kapoor’s character is the film’s primary focus; he plays a man seeking revenge for his father’s wrongful conviction. On the film being hero-centric, Meenakshi adds, “I knew from the very beginning that this was totally Anil’s vehicle.”

Looking ahead, Meenakshi is reviewing several scripts across formats as she prepares to return to the screen. Last year, she recreated the track Jeet Jayenge Hum Tu Agar from the film along with actor Manjari Fadnis.

For actor Jaaved Jaaferi, the 40th anniversary of Meri Jung is especially significant as it was his first Bollywood film. He says, “For anyone, his debut remains closest to his heart.” He emphasizes the uniqueness of his role: “It was not a typical masala movie villain role. Instead, Vicky was a suave, smart college student, who was much ahead of his times when it comes to portraying vileness on screen.”

The offer was a major chance, one that his father, the legendary 70s actor Jagdeep, also encouraged: “Backed by N P Sippy, directed by Subhash Ghai, penned by Javed Akhtar, and featuring co-stars like Amrish Puri ji and Anil Kapoor.”

He notes an interesting piece of trivia: “I would mention here that Anil Kapoor was not the first choice for the role; it was initially meant for Amitabh Bachchan but later went to the former. So, what more could any newcomer ask for?”

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s protégé Meezaan Jafri is ‘blindly following’ Priyadarshan for his next
Akash Bhatnagar (MUMBAI MIRROR; March 11, 2020)

Last year, Meezaan Jafri debuted in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Malaal, a film about young love, and now is all set to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather Jagdeep and dad Jaaved Jaaferi and experiment with comedy genre in Hungama 2. The film, which marks Priyadarshan’s comeback to Bollywood after seven years, also features Paresh Rawal, Shilpa Shetty and Pranitha Subhash.

“Comedy is one of the most difficult genres and Priyan sir shoots in a unique way. You are given the dialogues just before the shot. He shows you how to play it out on camera and you just have to follow his cues. Nobody knows what is happening on the set except him. I spoke with Akshay (Kumar) sir on the sets of Sooryavanshi about this and he told me to blindly follow Priyan sir; it will turn out great. He confessed that whatever he has learnt about comedy is from the filmmaker,” shares the young actor who gave his nod to the film after hearing that Priyadarshan would be helming it without even hearing the script. “I have a special connect with Priyan sir. My grandfather acted in his first Hindi film, Muskurahat.”

The actor admits that working with a strong ensemble cast was a bit unnerving initially. “During the first few days, I was dying, literally,” he laughs, admitting that he was petrified to be standing beside actors he had idolised all his life. “The rest of the cast share a great camaraderie with Priyan sir, having worked with him earlier. It was like home ground for them and they were completely chilled out,” he reminisces.

Did he take any tips from his father or grandfather? “No, I was too scared that once I start a conversation, it would never end,” he guffaws, reasoning that living up to their expectations would have been difficult as they excel in their craft.

In the Hungama sequel, Jafri Jr sports a completely different look from his first film and admits that many from the frat failed to recognise him. “Once I was chatting with Salman (Khan) sir... midway through the conversation it dawned on him who I was. A similar thing happened with Amit (Amitabh Bachchan) sir at his Diwali bash,” he chuckles.

Given how happy Meezaan looks, you hate asking if the failure of his first film took a toll. “You do get attached to a project when you are a part of it, but at the end, you can’t pinpoint a single thing that didn’t work. And the good thing was that people appreciated me, which is why I am getting so much work now,” he says.

In an era of remakes, is there a role of his father’s that he’d like to recreate. Pat comes the reply, “His character from Meri Jung—a sexy, cool villain, who also dances.” However, for the moment, he would like to step into the action genre next.
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Horsing around with Shilpa...

Meezaan will recreate the popular Main Khiladi Tu Anari chartbuster, “Chura Ke Dil Mera”, with Shilpa Shetty in Hungama 2. He is really kicked about it as he loves dancing. “I have grown up watching Shilpa’s movies, idolising her and hoping I’d meet her one day and get to take a picture with her. So, doing a movie with her is sublime. It feels like I am in the movie that I’m watching,” the actor says dreamily.

Three generations of the Jaaferis on what it takes to keep audiences entertained
Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 9, 2019)

All of 80 years, veteran comedian Jagdeep has an elephant’s memory. Precisely half-a-century ago, he escorted his son to the premiere of his film Anmol Moti (1969) — the first Indian film to feature an underwater fight sequence —in which his character wrestles with an octopus. When the creature eliminates his character in the scene, his son Jaaved Jaaferi, barely six then, was reduced to a howling mess. “He felt his father was no more,” says Jagdeep, whose film career spans over 70 years. Ahead of his grandson, Meezaan’s debut in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Malaal, three generations of the Jaaferi clan collect at the patriarch’s Versova home to mull over their shared legacy.

Most know Jaaved as an accomplished actor, host and voiceover talent, the one who introduced Indian audiences to freestyle dance. But ask Jagdeep about his son’s earliest achievements and he returns to the filming of Wardat (starring Mithun Chakraborty) in Kashmir. At an after-shoot party, Javed, then just 15, beat the film’s baddie Shakti Kapoor in a dance battle. “Woh bola ‘kiske saath mukabla kara rahe ho?’” the veteran actor recalls. Looking back at the incident that occurred four decades ago, Jaaved, credits his youthful exuberance for the win. “I was in Class 10 then, and could dance for an hour non-stop.” He remembers being introduced to freestyle dancing on the streets of New York in 1983, while on a family vacation. “We came across street performers ‘body popping’ and ‘moon-walking’, and we were so mesmerised by their moves, we watched them for a whole hour, I remember.” On his return, Jaaved worked on mastering those moves, and, it proved a game changer at college fests — he topped the All India Dance Competition the following year.

Jaaved remembers accompanying brother Naved Jafri to nightclubs — “only during the day” — to put his skills to test. “We would brave muggy Mumbai afternoons to frequent a place near the airport called Take Off (later dubbed Go Bananas) every Sunday, dressed in shimmery outfits,” says Jaaved, who also remembers that his parents didn’t entirely approve of those ‘nightclub visits’. “Before disco became a thing, nightclubs had a negative connotation, because films depicted them as dens for sharab, jua and cabaret,” says Jaaved.

On becoming a parent, Jaaved says, he allowed Meezaan more room to keep up with his social calendar. “By my time, no one went out dancing though. Most of my friends would just go out for a drink,” says Meezaan, who played basketball for Maharashtra. He also attended New York Film School before dropping out to assist Sanjay Leela Bhansali in Padmaavat, an experience he describes as “a learning experience that no film school can possibly deliver”.

“I was well-versed with the industry and my parents prepared me for every job that comes being on the sets. I was told, ‘Even if someone says ‘chai laao’, you have to do it,’” says Meezaan, who will be making his debut in Bhansali’s forthcoming production. Javed was delighted and apprehensive about Meezaan’s decision. “I wanted him to complete the course. But then, Sanjay [Bhansali] convinced me that he would groom him,” says the concerned father.

While Meezaan’s entry into Bollywood seems meticulously planned, Jaaved’s was left more to chance. In his final year at RD National College, when he was the secretary of the drama club — and would hold a crowd with his immaculate impressions — he learnt about a casting call. “Subhash Ghai’s wife had seen me dance at college fests. So when he [Ghai] was looking for someone to play a suave villain, who could dance — something that was unheard of then — I decided to give it a shot,” he says about his debut film Meri Jung (1985), when he created quite a stir with his slick moves in the number Bol Baby Bol.

“Jaaved ke dance ne disco ko maar diya,” says Jagdeep proudly, who, for his part, got a head start as a child actor in films such as Afsana (1951) and Do Bigha Zamin (1953). His modest beginnings carved his socialist outlook — something he shared with filmmakers who he worked with at the time — K Asif, Guru Dutt, V Shantaram and Bimal Roy. “When Aar Paar became a hit, people asked Guru Dutt to throw a party at Taj Mahal hotel, but he refused. He said ‘I won’t host a party at a place where my workers will feel uncomfortable’. Eventually, the celebrations took place at a film studio,” he says, remembering the stupendous success of the 1954 noir comedy.

Jagdeep, who played a minor in that film, remembers how resourceful Dutt could be when it came to ironing out production niggles. “A mob of 500 had assembled in the garage where the song Sun Sun Sun Sun Zaalima was being shot,” Jagdeep recalls. “The crowd was making it impossible to get the desired shot. The ruckus even ticked off the garage owner who demanded that the shoot be wrapped up soon,” says Jagdeep. It didn’t help that the film’s female lead Shyama, a huge star then, was willing to shoot for only three hours. “So, Dutt asked cinematographer V K Murthy to set up his camera inside the car and experiment with angles and close-shots to ensure the crowd didn’t spill into the frame,” says Jagdeep. The end result was a number that was lauded for its avant-garde picturisation. “Necessity is truly the master of invention,” says Jaaved.

An enterprising maverick himself, Jaaved reinvented his career in TV after his son Meezaan was born in 1995. “When I moved to TV, people said only flop film actors turn to the small screen, but I was confident that I was connecting with the youth,” says the actor-turned-VJ, who engineered a new coolth with his ‘Hinglish’ speak. “They were saying ‘Yo’, but I flipped it, and started ‘Oye’.” Straddling music and film-based shows, Jaaved soon became the highest-paid actor on TV. “I was making a lakh per episode then,” says the actor known for his exceptional impersonations of virtually every Hindi film actor, as well as his original avatars, such as ‘Abdul Cutpiece’ and ‘Irani Boxer’. Like his son, Jagdeep, too, was known for his masterful impressions. “I would encounter these colourful characters while travelling by train and bus, and at Irani hotels, and adapt them in my onscreen avatars,” says the Jagdeep, whose iconic turn as Soorma Bhopali in the 1975 blockbuster Sholay turned him into an overnight sensation.

But Jagdeep modestly shifts the praise to Salim-Javed’s writing. “Javed would actually demonstrate the Bhopali twang, I only had to copy it,” says Jagdeep, crediting the writers for detailing the nuances of the quirky character. The character itself, he says, was borrowed from a theatre production the writer duo worked on 15 years prior to Sholay.

Today, as Meezaan enters the industry his father and grandpa have made a mark in, Javed feels his journey will be different. “When I got into films, the hero had a mould — he flaunted the same hairstyle for 10 years, and was different from the character actors. But today, the hero alters himself based on the character.”

He trusts his son will wear the Jaaferi name like a badge of honour. “When I came into the industry, I was known as Jagdeep’s son, and I am still proud of that tag. My father was a comedian, and I was introduced as a stylish actor who could dance. But then, you have to make it on your own.”

The Jaaferis will, no doubt, be keenly watching, like the rest of us, to see how Meezaan shapes his own identity. 

Moving out of the periphery of pop culture consciousness, Jaaved Jaaferi hits the reset button again as the star of Monsoon Wedding’s recent musical
Shaikh Ayaz (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 13, 2017)

"The point is, I was the last one on.” Jaaved Jaaferi’s booming voice, instantly recognisable thanks to his various avatars over the years as a film actor, funnyman, dancer and TV host, ricochets in his 17th floor apartment in Lokhandwala complex. “They had three workshops over the past year and a half. Everybody knew what they had to do. I didn’t. So, when I landed in New York I was totally raw, and, kind of, nervous. This is the first time I was doing a full-fledged musical. Eight shows a week.” He feigns exhaustion.

Jaaferi has recently returned from the US, having acted in the musical version of Mira Nair’s 2001 cult film Monsoon Wedding. The musical premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California and will travel to Broadway next year. Last seen on Hindi screens as a flamboyant baddie opposite Hrithik Roshan in Bang Bang! three years ago, Jaaferi plays Lalit in the musical, the role of the bride’s father, made memorable by Naseeruddin Shah in the original.

To conjure Lalit, Jaaferi didn’t revisit Monsoon Wedding. He wanted to avoid “the whole Naseer bhai influence.” Instead, he says he channelled his inner Tevye, the Yiddish daddy from his favourite Hollywood musical, Fiddler On The Roof. As an actor, he usually starts with a point of reference — “to refer your character to something in real life.” For instance, in the 2007 comedy Dhamaal — his most prominent mainstream success yet, alongside 2005’s Salaam Namaste — he dropped his baritone completely to assume the voice of a 10-yearold.

His character Manav was a dungaree-clad, beret-sporting man-child with a penchant for getting his friends and himself into trouble. “When you play a character you try to make a new person, which obviously incorporates the way he walks, thinks, and the voice. For Manav, I took on the demeanour of Laurel & Hardy and the slouch. I gave him a lisp because we had to make him a weak character,” he says, forgetting to mention that so much of his performance in that film is more an ode to Mr Bean. Similarly, the cowboy of Salaam Namaste had shades of Crocodile Dundee and Feroz Khan.

Explaining his approach, especially with impersonation (he balks at the term “mimicry”) he says, “You have to caricature it a bit. If RK Laxman draws Mr Bachchan, he will probably extend his nose or make his eyes droop. A cartoonist takes a prominent feature of a personality and pushes it a little to make it funny.” A man of many talents, Jaaferi calls himself a keen observer of life and people. “It’s all about your power of observation. It’s like having a database. You can take from whoever you want, but make it your own. When A R Rahman takes a riff from Michael Jackson, he makes a new song.” Jaaferi has a madcap mimetic gift. He is devastatingly funny. But that’s reserved only for the camera.

In person, Jaaferi is very, very serious — even mournful. “It’s assumed that a comedian has to be funny all the time. From Chaplin to Johnny Walker saab to Mehmood saab, they were all serious people.” Spend some time with the Janus-faced star and a portrait emerges of a man who has the supple flexibility to draw from his bag of tricks and become anyone he wants. His Twitter bio reads: “Biodegradable Entertainer. Actor, producer, director, stand up comedian, choreographer, voice artist, occasional pessimist, frequent optimist. Aam Aadmi.”

The son of Jagdeep, a much-loved Bollywood comedian, humour has always been his sweet spot. But how on earth did he inherit a talent for dance? Jaaferi was the face of Boogie Woogie, the dance TV show that ran for so long, one female participant who was then 15 and is now a 33-year-old soccer mom “calls me uncle.” In fact, Jaaferi got his Bollywood break in 1985 when he landed the role of a rock-n-roll villain in Subhash Ghai’s Meri Jung. A friend dropped his “video tape” off at Ghai’s office and the next thing he knew, he was cast as the “dancing villain, a first in Hindi cinema.”

Today, looking back, Jaaferi says with a touch of regret, “It was a mistake.” His life would have turned out differently if he had been launched as a hero instead. “It was a wrong decision because at that point, villains were well-defined. Villains were bad people. Dancing was done by good people. If ever a villain danced, he was bad at it, but I could kill with dance, I was so good.” “It’s like Govinda. Govinda came in a year and half after I did. And he was also a dance guy. If I had come as a hero, I would have been somewhere in that zone.”

Post Meri Jung, he quickly got typecast. Bollywood soon put him on a musical chair and before long, he was relegated to middling multi-hero films. Over the years, Jaaferi has tried to repackage himself but all efforts to hit the reset button on a promising career have been met with mixed results. And yet, he has stuck around. Whether it was his VJ-ing days during which he did side-splitting skits on Bollywood, the zany voiceover for the dubbed version of the Japanese game show Takeshi’s Castle (he reimagined General Lee as Dilip Kumar), or the “It’s different” refrain from the Maggi ad, our pop culture is somewhat incomplete without Jaaved Jaaferi’s minor presence. Now, having been around for 30 odd years — “there were some even, also,” he deadpans — what excites him most is the chance to be a “principal” actor in a film.

“I would have loved to play Boman’s (Irani) role in 3 Idiots,” instead of the real Ranchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad (his appearance in the Raju Hirani blockbuster, was brief but important, plot-wise). By his own admission, Jaaferi is a victim of “image.” Assume, he entreats, “The director would never have cast me for Boman’s role, because I am not old enough to be Kareena’s (Kapoor) father and not too young, either.” He believes he belongs in the same space as Irrfan Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui but nobody will cast him in their roles. Again, that damn “image”.

At 53, Jaaferi looks young enough to match his graduation photograph. And yet, he’s a father of three teenagers. One of them, Meezaan, is following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps. Tipped to be launched by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Jaaferi observes nostalgically, “He’s coming in approximately at the same age I did — 22. The way he’s coming in is also the same. Out of the blue, you get an offer and you’re in.”

The same could be said about Jaaferi’s blink-and-you- miss-it political career. A political rookie, he contested for 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Lucknow on an Aam Aadmi Party ticket, but lost to BJP heavyweight Rajnath Singh. Joining politics was a kneejerk reaction. Even his family was surprised. “I didn’t want to be a politician. I just wanted to say I believe in this, ‘put your money where your mouth is’ kind of a thing.” He still believes in AAP’s promise of “political change”, but washes his hands of active politics. “Bachchan saab burnt his fingers in politics. I should have, perhaps, learnt my lessons.”