Saif Ali Khan reacts to the controversy that his recent comment triggered after Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior’s release, and talks about reinventing his onscreen image
Juhi Chakraborty and Titas Chowdhury (HINDUSTAN TIMES; February 16, 2020)

From playing a boy-next-door in his initial films to dissolving his identity to disappear into myriad roles in the last two decades, Saif Ali Khan has gone through a sort of metamorphosis.

Besides a cracker of a start he has had this year with two back-to-back successes — Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior and Jawaani Jaaneman — he also landed in trouble with a statement he made that backfired. We get talking to the 49-year-old.

Your comment that ‘there was no concept of India until the British came’ drew a lot of flak. How would you like to clarify that?
There are a lot of questions that one gets asked, that you have to answer over a long conversation, about history and politics. But, I’ve also learnt that (with) a lot of these questions, the answers tend to divide people — either they agree or disagree — which isn’t really our job. My job is to unite people, and I do that with the kind of films I do. So, I think it’s wrong to get into a situation which might divide people. So, from now on, I’d like to stay away from such conversations, and focus more on the positive things of my profession that’s bringing the country together.

The past few years look like Saif version 2.0. Was it all planned?
I think it’s a combination of a few things — the kind of films being made, roles being offered and the audiences, which has made things more interesting. The brackets are changing. It has given an opportunity to play varied characters. I really enjoy acting and I’m enjoying the kind of roles I’m getting.

After quite a few intense roles, did you do Jawaani Jaaneman to step away from that zone?
It’s true. You want to mix it up a little bit as an actor. I’d like to try and do a little more comedy, generally. I enjoy it. Also, I’ve had my share of intense parts. People also enjoy a variety, and I’d like to deliver that.

You introduced urban romantic comedies in 2000s. Would you call yourself a trendsetter?
I remember talking to Adi (Aditya Chopra; filmmaker) about that. He introduced the genre in India. I was part of the wave. At that time, multiplexes were coming up, so we changed the kind of films we made. From Amitabh Bachchan’s angry young man films to the movies that were made when Khans came in, to witnessing films like Hum Tum (2004) and Salaam Namaste (2005)... I’ve been involved in these changes.

Do you find romcoms to be an easy genre to pull off?
They’re breezy! The crisis happens when something isn’t making you happy. They can be really funny also. So, as an actor, it’s both easy and difficult to pull them off. But, it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. I do enjoy romcoms; people enjoy watching them.

Would you say subtlety is an art?
It’s not easy to be easy. It needs control to look effortless. I suspect that our audiences like a bit of louder stuff before they call it acting. So, it’s difficult to be subtle. Chef (2017) didn’t do well; I believe it had a subtle performance by me. I worked so hard. But, may be audience believed that in this kind of a film, we aren’t really acting.

Saif Ali Khan's Jaawani Jaaneman hair stylist Aalim on making the actor look a decade younger for the role of a father
Mohar Basu (MID-DAY; June 3, 2019)

Slipping into the role of a father in Nitin Kakkar's family drama, Jawaani Jaaneman, Saif Ali Khan, one would assume, would add a tinge of grey to the wavy locks and facial fuzz that's now become synonymous with his appearance. But it is his summer-ready crew cut, sported at recent appearances and family gatherings, that has taken cinephiles by surprise. Fans of the actor have celebrity hairstylist Hakim Aalim to thank for shaving off years from Khan's appearance for the film, which marks the debut of Pooja Bedi's daughter Alaia Furniturewalla.

"Saif can pull off a lot of hairstyles, so, working with him is easy," says Aalim, adding that he decided to go chop-chop on Khan's mane after a series of brainstorming sessions with Kakad. "Over the last five years, he hasn't sported a hairstyle like this. He has a young face, and a spunky spirit, so we decided to go for a faded beard, with short spikes on top. It reminds people of him from older times, which is why they find it appealing. He looks 10 years younger; cool and sexy."

Khan's "chameleon-like quality" of becoming the character he plays, enables stylists like Aalim to accordingly set his appearances. "When working on films like Salaam Namaste and Omkara, he became [my] inspiration. But, for this film, we needed something fresh. Also, Saif has an intrinsic style. He doesn't need many frills or even a stylist."

The final appearance that they arrived at is devoid of the drama that initially became part of discussions, he says. "We considered giving him tattoos and earrings too, apart from a thick beard. But, during a final meeting at a suburban hotel, we made a sketch of the look, and finalised this." Yet, he promises, there's more to come. "There will be a few surprises, even in terms of the look. There are a few more, which I can't reveal. I will travel to London to be on the sets, and create something on the spot."

Not that old at 47, Saif Ali Khan — these days occasionally better known as Taimur’s dad — is still game to experiment and to learn from 25-year-old co-actors. Rigidity ages you, not years, he explains as he speaks on ageing, censorship, and how it’s difficult to frame rules for a society that is civilised and medieval at the same time
Anshul Chaturvedi (BOMBAY TIMES; January 5, 2018)

Among other things, Kaalakaandi has also been talked about for, what, 73 cuts?
That’s what you started with, okay! So, 73 cuts. And then it went to the FCAT, and came out with one cut. One cut! It got a U/A rating. It got U/A on the trailer. It is some bad s*** in there.

In the time that you have been in the movies, have you seen censorship getting harder or easier?
Well, I think it’s fairly easy now, but it’s linked to something else that I find interesting. It’s the treatment of the movie. When we are actually open to what we feel the audience would like, you know, like Spike Lee remade that Korean old-boy movie about a guy who eventually sleeps with his daughter. People don’t wanna see that. So, it was a huge flop, nobody touched that again. Not because you’re not allowed to make it, but because it’s not a good idea. So sometimes, even though you’re allowed nudity, it would be interesting to reach a situation where we’re allowed to do anything, but people have realised it’s not a good practice to alienate families, it’s not a good practice to have bad language in the film if you want a Friday audience. I remember till very recently — I’m probably too old for it now — I would cringe a bit if somebody used bad language in a film and I was watching it with my mother, or if there was a particularly raunchy scene. I’d say, okay, I should be on my own, or she shouldn’t be here. I think a lot of the country is like that. So, box-office prospects will be damaged, and that is the relationship we should be attuned to.

Double-meaning dances and dialogues came in big time in the ‘90s, and there was this situation where Tarun dance master — bless him, wherever he is — said to me one day that this is the song, the heroine comes in and leans in front of you and you do five pelvic thrusts into her face. So I said, ‘Ohh... isn’t that a bit... vulgar?’ And he was like, ‘No. You’re doing backward pelvic thrusts. If it was going forward, it would be disgusting.’ Why did that happen? It’s because you couldn’t show a lovemaking scene, couldn’t show a relationship, couldn’t show a kiss. So you start developing cheap thrills.

The nineties sort of specialised in that, some would say — when you describe this, Govinda’s songs come to mind instantly.
Yeah, but which is great — dancing, or whatever. I’m just saying, it’s got repercussions, you know, censorship. ‘Coz people will find a way to say it, but sometimes the truth is better. A nice kiss — there’s nothing wrong with that. And if you say kissing is not happening, then to show that you end up doing all kinds of other twisted stuff (laughs). So that’s changed now. I think the answer to your question is that India is a difficult country to make rules for. There’s a civilised section of society that sometimes behaves not-so-civilised... and I feel it’s hard to make liberal laws sometimes, because people will abuse them. Like, people don’t like guns and the idea of guns, but I grew up with them, and I have a gun license. When I sent it to be renewed, they said you can only have 25 cartridges on your license a year — unless you’re a national-level shooter. Which is a good rule. So people who are good at it as a sport have exemptions. But you have to prove yourself first. Good law. Why 25 cartridges? They said people at weddings start firing them (laughs)! So there’s always some law being abused by somebody; that takes it away from us. So you understand that and shrug, and say, well, I can see how this could be abused. We’re a schizophrenic nation, for sure, where we’re civilised on one level and medieval on another.

I’m sure Prasoon is not going to be... I pity him, actually. Because people will be looking at him and saying, ‘The new face...’. But nothing’s going to change because the mandate will stay the same, and I feel bad because people are hopeful. But, having said that, that body gave our film an ‘A’ certificate with 73 cuts, which is pretty much ‘XXX’. And then FCAT gave us one cut. And it’s actually really liberal. Because if I was being at all draconian, I would definitely give it some cuts.

I had read something about a Hollywood guy making a film about the Navy — have you heard the expression, ‘swear like a sailor’? They use that language. So in the pursuit of authenticity, Deepak Dobriyal and Vijay Raaz, who are the finest actors in India according to me, are playing mafia boys, and they’re not going to speak to each other in polite language. So to reflect that, we need that language. It shouldn’t be banned, it shouldn’t be cut. You say it’s an adult film and allow it.

Would Omkara’s expletives be allowed today?
They are being allowed today. But I think our growth in India — and art is just one reflection of our society — islike that,a squiggly growth.It’s not straight. Like if you look at my career even, or if you look at the films anybody’s done, it’s not been a breaking of ceilings. We hit ceilings of creativity too. So we made Ek Haseena Thi long time ago, we made Hum Tum, which was a definitive romcom, and such a list of anti-cliches at the time,and Omkara. And we hit a ceiling. None of those makers went anywhere beyond that, none of the actors went anywhere beyond that, so we kind of double back and start doing some crap and then go back up again. And then hit another ceiling at some point. So it’s not been straight. I feel a victim of this in a way. It’s circular.

It’s also about what you are offered...
Yeah, but you would have thought that after Omkara I’d be offered some really definitive stuff.

That doesn’t depend on you, right, but on ideas other people are having?
Some people are so simplistic in their critique when they say, ‘Why is this actor in this movie?’ And I’m like, I want to get paid, that’s why! That’s the best he was getting, obviously that’s why. They sometimes write about you as though you’re really manipulating every moment.


When it’s not up to you?
Of course, it’s not up to you! In fact, stardom is a freak of the universe. It’s just being the right guy in the right place with the right zeitgeist requiring the right energy. It’s a mix. You don’t engineer that. If you watch Clint Eastwood in A Fistful Of Dollars, that is an epic movie, he engineered that, he created that. Sergeo Leone gave him a remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, he brought his own Levis, his own gun, trimmed pages of dialogue into just two lines – and created this iconic character. So I guess you’ve got to be the right guy at the right time. It’s easy to understand in retrospect, but you can’t go out there and say I’m going to be a successful movie star. It either happens or it doesn’t. It’s kind of linked to the time.

I like this time, a lot. I’m enjoying even the digital space. The kind of acting we’re being asked to do,I don’t know how universally popular it will be, but it’s finally on the same level as the American school of acting, which is subtle, expressive, you want the audience to lean in, to watch you, you don’t want to be leaning in on them. So to implore somebody doesn’t have to be very loud with a lot of glycerine. I mean obviously, we all know this now. But it’s more creative as a performer, it’s less stylistic.

How did your current role come your way?
My agency said we’ve got this script, it’s really interesting, we know you’ll like it. And I hate being told that because I like to imagine people don’t really know me. But it’s pretty obvious they do (laughs)! I was like, no, you can’t know what I’ll like. And then Vishal Bhardwaj,while I was waiting for a shot in Rangoon, said, ‘Nahi padhi tumne?’ I said, nahi. He said, ‘padho, it’s totally up your alley’. I said, what, again, you know what I like, eh? He said, ‘Yes, I do!’. I read it and I did love it. Akshat Verma is a wonderful writer, really good director. And I think it’s the most real and clever movie I’ve ever been in.

And the quality of acting of these guys upped my game, changed me as an actor, which is phenomenal. I mean, I haven’t had a great time at the box office recently. It’s been a phenomenal year of growth though, ever since Chef, which had good reviews in terms of performing. Now whether it’s too late, I don’t know (laughs). This kind of acting, working with these guys,the new generation of actors out there, it’s all changing…

What happens when a 47-year-old and a 25-year-old exchange notes on acting on the set? What do they ask you, what do you ask them?
He’s (my co-star) like, ‘I’m so happy you’re doing something like this. You’ve smashed this’.‘Smashed’ – he used that expression (laughs). And then he said, ‘But I didn’t like the last couple of movies,the vibe. You were the flag-bearer of this kind of cinema, at one point’. I said, yeah, I’m trying to make a bit more money,you can’t just do this kind of cinema (laughs).

What is ‘this kind of cinema’?
Little indie, pushing the envelope...like a Ek Haseena Thi, rather than the mainstream.

Was Salaam Namaste mainstream?
Yeah, definitely. Even though at the time, it was a little more multiplex, but it was the precursor to the mainstream, modern, Bollywood romcom. At the time, Aditya (Chopra) said, ‘There’s this new thing coming up called the multiplex, so I want to hit that’. He said you’re a multiplex hero, and it was not a great thing at that time (laughs)!

So if you had to respond to your young co-actor who says, ‘you are the flag-bearer of this kind of cinema’, and you had to list out the movies that define ‘this type of cinema’ for you, which would be the top three?
It would be Ek Haseena Thi, Being Cyrus, even Omkara. These would be the three. I think there are a couple more that I’m missing. Kaalakaandi, for sure, now. I think I’ve always done it, ’coz I’ve always liked that idea. My dream position in life would be to be a saleable mainstream actor who loves doing something slightly off-centre as well... Johnny Depp’s become a huge star, but when I was doing Being Cyrus I looked up to him.

I don’t think I’ve ever been too bothered actually, about the box office or a particular kind of image. I just want to act in... I think if you can act naturally, it’s better. Rather than having a ‘style’.

Why do you think you mostly get offered the urbane, polished romcom?
I think people are slow to move. It’s not necessarily a very creative profession. People here are trying to make money, so they’re superstitious. Let’s rephrase it slightly. I’ve played a lot unsympathetic characters, actually. I’ve played these spoilt, moneyed people who don’t want to marry the girl.And once in a while when I played against that type and fought for it, and played something that the camera supports... but generally, those have not been written for me. Maybe it’s a preconception that people have that I’m perhaps spoilt and from privilege, so...

Do people have trouble imagining you outside your ‘zone’?
It’s a shame that we are victims – and now in the social media age,more than ever – of what we are personally. There are so many American actors who change their accents for every film, which I try and do. Hugh Laurie is an Etonian who went to Cambridge. He is the most English, but he’s got an American accent in so many movies. So it shouldn’t matter. And Omkara’s proof that it doesn’t matter. I did Rangoon. Chef perhaps is again me... But it’s always been the best of what I’ve been offered, you can’t get beyond that. Maybe it’s a vibe I’ve given, I don’t know why. Maybe that’s my comfort zone of expressing myself. But I hope I get a chance to do more interesting characters like that. I would like to play a slightly loud-mouthed Delhi guy. Sometimes what you get offered is not the most creative, they feel that something’s run, so let it keep going.

It’s clearly not running. To quote Ashim Ahluwalia, the Bollywood formula is dead.
What was it?

If you’re offered a string of romcoms, that’s a formula...
But we’ve all known that’s wrong. Govinda went through that, everyone does. It’s timing. You say, ‘can I get away with two more of these and make a killing? And be really good, ’coz I’m really good at it now? Or are people fed up?’. Some people are smart enough to move, some people get complacent and wait for a disaster, or three, before they realise it.

How is it to see Taimur hogging national headlines every third day?
It’s a mess yaar. It makes me think, what is reality? It’s this crazy thing, your constructs and your ideas. the world changes pretty fast yaar. Fluidity. My father was pretty fluid. 1971, he lost the captaincy of India, lost his title, all in the same week. He was no longer a prince. So I was a prince for a year, ’coz I was born in 1970. So at least I am a genuine ex, erstwhile. But it was all for the good, it’s too expensive. They would give us a little money and say, run the estate (laughs). How? We had no money to look after them and ourselves. We didn’t grow up in an atmosphere of financial luxury, at all. But people don’t buy that... Growing up in Delhi was kind of aimless for me. We were just partying and not doing much in the day. Films in India was never my dream job.

What was your dream job?
Nothing! My father sent me to an expensive school and he was like, my gift to you is an education. But I had no interest in academics, or, I knew I didn’t want to sit on a desk for eight hours and sell this or do that for a living. Somewhere it was artistic... so it was a top-class education, completely wasted, but it’s not wasted because there are many things an education gives you apart from a grade. And a respect for academia and knowledge and books and people and all that stuff, yeah. I mean, I’m half joking. But I think his idea was that I’ll end up a doctor or a lawyer or something like this – no, a doctor’s a bit much, for a Pataudi (laughs). In my defence, I’d like to say – and this is politically incorrect – I’m the first Pataudi probably to have worked for a living in ten generations! But with that living, I restored the family home. I’d inherited not much except the name and the legacy... and the odd palace (laughs).

Now, can we have a Padmavati quote, while we’re on royalty and palaces?
My quote is I’m really not sure who she was. But I have a great deal of respect for the Jaipur royal family and all the Rajasthanis, we used to play polo together, my grandfather did. So...I think it’s very sensible of Mr Rajamouli to make Baahubali a fictional story and not the Mahabharat. It’s much less complicated it seems.

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.”