Before Badhaai Ho, actor Gajraj Rao always felt like the groom’s best friend. Now he feels like the groom
Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 28, 2018)

“I am unable to process what has been happening,” says Gajraj Rao, his eyes lighting up to convey the extent of how much his life has altered in the last 10 days. His latest screen outing Badhaai Ho, which is pegged as the sleeper hit of the year, and has already earned Rs 69.5 crore at the box office. Rao plays a middle-aged father of two who finds himself in a spot when he learns that his wife is pregnant again.

The overwhelming response to the film has earned Rao, who has essayed small but significant roles in movies such as Black Friday (Dawood Phanse), Talvar (Dhaniram) and Blackmail (private detective Chawla), a sort of overnight stardom he has never experienced in his 25-year-long acting career.

Now, people who take selfies with him actually recognise him, he says with a grin. “I was on a flight a few years ago and sporting a bald look. And a co-passenger asked me, ‘Shankar ji kaise hain? Saath nahin ho aap log aaj kal?’ It was only later that I realised he had mistaken me for Loy [Mendonsa] (from the musical trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy).”

The 47-year-old’s family hails from a small village in Rajasthan, but he spent his formative years in Delhi, thanks to his father who held a job in the Indian Railways. “Railway colonies are very cosmopolitan. You’re meeting people from across the country and I was always fond of picking up languages,” says Rao, who, coincidentally, plays a ticket checker in Badhaai Ho. “That I have a Bengali caller tune today has a lot to do with our four Bengali neighbours at the Railway colony we lived in.”

Rao, who showed no interest in medicine, as his father had hoped, started out with N K Sharma’s theatre group Act One, which also included actors such as Ashish Vidyarthi and Manoj Bajpayee. He worked in notable plays such as Jab Sheher Humara Sota Hai (starring Vidyarthi) and Netua (starring Bajpayee). Rao remembers his days in theatre fondly, but also rues that it was tough to make ends meet.

Rao eventually got his break in films when Tigmanshu Dhulia, who had seen Rao’s work in theatre, recommended him for a part in Bandit Queen. “Shekhar Kapur (director) asked me if I had acted before and I said ‘Yes’, and then he asked if I had acted in front of the camera and I said, ‘No’ and I was selected.”

But bite-sized roles in films and performing on stage at Delhi’s Mandi House weren’t enough to provide for a family, so Rao had to find a side hustle. “N K Sharma suggested that I adapt Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie into Hindi. The play was titled Pankh Hote Toh Udd Jaate .” What followed were jobs to write the anchor script for news channels, even assignments for the Navbharat Times, and a stint as an audience coordinator with Siddhartha Basu.

Rao’s career took a turn when he began assisting director Pradeep Sarkar on TV commercials and over time, formed his own production house Code Red Films, which has produced over 1,000 commercials. But Rao still feels that his move to advertising was only because he “didn’t want the family to suffer”. “Advertising saved me from the rat race of a struggler. Not that I didn’t have to struggle for good roles, but I don’t have a sad story, and my struggle isn’t any worse than that of the next person.”

A peculiar aspect about Rao’s career, he says, is that he never chose work based on the commercials of a project. “I have even done films free of cost. For films such as Black Friday and No Smoking, Anurag [Kashyap] told me he didn’t have the money and I went along with them because those were projects I wanted to be associated with.” With a filmography comprising 15 films in over 20 years, one would assume that he has been picky, but Rao pins his limited filmography on the fact that he hasn’t been offered enough interesting roles. “Also, most theatre actors back then didn’t have a lure for cinema as one would hear horrid stories from those returning from Bombay. They would be so deflated and demotivated, they looked like they had returned from the Afghan war.”

While things have turned around, he says, “When I started out, they wouldn’t even let me read the script. They’d reason, ‘You are in scene 12 and 30, why do you want to read the entire script?’” But with character actors getting their time under the sun, there couldn’t be a better time than now for Rao. “Initially, I would feel like the dulha’s best friend, dancing away to celebrate someone else’s happiest day. Now, I feel like the dulha!”

Kashyap on his love for the badshah, who he came close to directing on numerous occasions
MID-DAY (January 15, 2018)

His repertoire boasts of films that are significantly distanced from the kind that Shah Rukh Khan has featured in, but Anurag Kashyap vows to collaborate with the actor before departing from Bollywood. In his career spanning over two decades, Kashyap has been in talks to work with SRK on several occasions, but none of them materialised. Referring to his 2007 John Abraham-starrer, No Smoking, Kashyap said, “SRK wanted to do No Smoking, and was upset when it [didn’t materiase]. I also went to him with Allwyn Kalicharan. I wanted to cast him alongside a Hollywood superstar. Things were almost locked, but again, it didn’t happen.”

Yet, Kashyap promises he “will not go anywhere without making a film with Shah Rukh Khan”. He adds, “We will work together. I will write a film that will lure him. He should be attracted to it.”

The director is in awe of the actor, who, he says, has given him a helping hand, “like a big brother.” “ When he loves you, he’ll approach things in a certain way. When I was struggling, [he’d tell me], ‘If you do what I tell you to do, your problems will disappear’. But I didn’t want him to make my life,” he said.

Kashyap, who has, over the years, earned the image of a rebel in Bollywood, said he can’t fight with Khan. “He is the only guy I can never speak up to. I can fight with the world, but not him. If he scolds me, I’ll sit in a corner and cry. I love him to death.”

John Abraham explains why action heroes will always be the longest lasting heroes...
Nayandeep Rakshit (DNA; August 24, 2016)


Your last few roles have also been action-oriented. Coincidence?
Because of my physicality, action comes naturally to me. That’s why any filmmaker’s safest bet in this genre would be John Abraham. In a way, most of my recent films have me doing action. But all of them are different kinds of action. Look at Welcome Back, which is very over-the-top commercial, masala action. Rocky Handsome was hand-to-hand, raw action. Dishoom is more stylised and Force will introduce action of another level in Bollywood.

Is action your most-loved genre then?
No. I love doing comedy. It has always been that way. If you see my track record, all my comedies have worked. Whether it’s Housefull 2, Dostana, Desi Boyz or even Welcome Back. They have all been superhits. There’s always the risk of being typecast but you can take advantage of being typecast as well (smiles). That isn’t wrong, right? After Dishoom, so many people messaged me calling me the last action hero which makes me feel good in a way. If you make an action film, with an element of comedy, then it will be a sure-shot success.

But it is difficult to do action in all the films, right?
With Force 2, we’ve upped the action quotient. But it’s difficult to keep upping the game with each film. There are cars flying but at the end, it’s that one man with a cigarette in his mouth saying, ‘Go ahead, make my day’, ‘This is real’, or ‘I’ll be back’. Action is here, in the eyes. The audience sniffs that out. The audience knows that if I turn back and I look, this guy will hammer now. In Bollywood, you can either be an action hero, romantic hero or a dancing hero.

In Hollywood, actors can stick to one genre whereas here, one has to do everything. Comment.
Here, if you do action, even if you are bloody good at it, people will say, ‘Arre, sirf action hi karta hai’. For example, in my career, I have done slice-of-life films, dramas comedies. I have had to balance it out. More than the genre, the bigger issue with me is that I am wearing my physicality like an albatross around my neck. That is very overpowering. In our country, you don’t judge an action hero for the action he does, but for everything else. That’s extremely wrong and unfair. I feel we must be accepting of this. I can say this on record that the longest lasting heroes will always be action heroes. Romantic heroes will come and go. If there’s someone, you will tear his poster someday and put another romantic hero’s poster. Their audiences move on, they are floating audiences. Action heroes always have fixed audiences. Mark my words — everybody who has watched Force will come to watch Force 2. We have a really strong market. So it doesn’t matter how you get typecast, what matters is how you choose films. I will always have that mix.

Do you think action has become a bastardised term in Bollywood today?
I don’t know if it’s become bastardised. True action heroes must be given their due credit. Honestly, there are only one or two of us. I’m not saying that it’s this fight of action heroes versus everyone else. I have danced in many of my films and I enjoy doing that. I danced my heart out, but there’s a difference. I dance like a hero, not like a dancer. A hero should be big, larger-than-life. Action heroes possess that sense of presence which is why I enjoy what I do. I wish there are more.

You enjoy doing serious films like No Smoking and Madras Cafe too.
Yeah, I get such offers everyday. But there’s a reason why I haven't been able to do something in that space for quite sometime. I haven’t got the right script. My favourite film according to my understanding has been No Smoking. You see very few films like that. With me, it’s been like this from the beginning. If the trend says something, trust John Abraham to do exactly the opposite. Abhishek (Bachchan) told me I have looked my best in Dishoom. Now 20 films will come to me which will require me to have this look. Will I do them? The answer’s no. I am telling you today itself. I will probably do a romantic film, you never know. I will always do something out of the ordinary to get extraordinary films.

Is that why you turned producer?
The biggest reason why I turned a producer is because I didn’t see films being made which I wanted to see. Someone had to produce them which is why I’m here. I have a lot of respect for Aditya Chopra, Karan Johar and Sajid Nadiadwala. I would love to act for them but as a producer, I feel there are certain kind of films that I want to make, even if they fail. It’s important that these films are still made.