As told to Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 15, 2018)

Every film is a learning experience and with Junglee Pictures’ upcoming slice-of-life comedy Badhaai Ho, the challenge was to make my new turn as a Delhi guy different from my previous three outings — Vicky Donor, Bewakoofiyaan and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan. For this film, I had to speak Hindi in three dialects — first, the anglicised Hindi my character Nakul uses at his work place, then, a UP accent at home as my parents, played by Neena Gupta and Gajraj Rao, have migrated to the capital from Meerut and finally, a Haryanvi accent with friends. I started working on it right from the first day of our workshop and was continuously guided by our writers, Akshat Ghildial who is from Meerut and Shantanu Srivastava from Haryana, who were always on the set.

Since I’m from Chandigarh and my parents live in Panchkula, it wasn’t very difficult getting a hang of the Haryanvi accent though it did require lots of hard work. But that’s not a problem as I enjoy prep and I’m able to pick up accents easily. I had learnt the Khariboli to convincingly play Prem Prakash Tiwari who owns a video cassette shop in Haridwar for Dum Laga Ke Haisha. My co-star Mahesh Sharma, who was also my trainer, was always around me to teach me how to say my lines right.

The recently released Andhadhun was my most challenging film as an actor. Piano is not an easy instrument to learn, one needs to be ambidextrous to play it, and while I’ve been playing the guitar since I was in college, the piano was new to me. Since I refused to use a hand double, I had to work extremely hard to get the notes right. My trainer Akshay Verma who is from Los Angeles but now based in Mumbai, taught me basic hand movements, telling me repeatedly to keep my fingers curved while playing. There were some very difficult pieces and I have tried to hit the right notes with Akshay who was always on the set keeping a check on me on the monitor. The training lasted for about six months with us sometimes spending five hours a day rehearsing on the piano. Now, I can use the skill during concerts.

Playing a blind guy wasn’t easy either. During prep, I realised in our country we don’t have many facilities for the physically challenged, for instance on buses and trains they don’t have special platforms. But we do have lifts with braille so I’m sure we are going in the right direction. My focus was to learn how a blind person walks and had strolled through the streets wearing a blindfold too. It was an enlightening experience.

Earlier, I had learnt Marathi for Vibhu Puri’s Hawaizaada in which I had played Shivkar Bapuji Talpade, a Maharashtrian scientist who is credited with having constructed India’s first unmanned plane. The screenplay writer Saurabh Bhave who is a Maharashtrian and writes scripts for Marathi films was my trainer. He incorporated some Marathi words in this script too and I would speak to my staff and maid in Marathi. It’s good to speak and know the language of the city you live in. Aata mala sagrah samajhte.

I learnt Bengali for Meri Pyaari Bindu which is a little more difficult than Marathi as the lingo was never a part of my milieu. I had trained a lot with writer Suprotim Sengupta and also watched many Bangla films, listened to Bengali songs and was glued to Anurag Basu’s Chokher Bali from his TV series, Stories by Rabindranath Tagore. I discovered the Nobel Laureate while shooting for the film and fell in love with Bengali literature and culture. Sometimes I feel like a Bengali trapped in a Punjabi’s body.

Hindi adaptation of the H’wood romantic drama The Fault in our Stars kicked off in Jamshedpur today with Mukesh Chhabra calling the shots
Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; July 9, 2018)

Mirror ( March 19) was the first to report that after months of scouting, Mukesh Chhabra had zeroed in on Sanjana Sanghi, seen briefly in Rockstar, Hindi Medium and Fukrey Returns, to play the leading lady opposite Sushant Singh Rajput in his directorial debut, the Hindi remake of Josh Boone’s 2014 Hollywood romantic drama, The Fault in our Stars. The film kicked off in Jamshedpur today with a 5 am shoot. “The first shot will be taken with Sanjana, who plays Kizie, and her parents in their home,” Mukesh informed from the Steel City on Sunday evening, admitting that he didn’t think he would get much sleep before D-Day. The film is titled Kizie Aur Manny, after its protagonists.

Based on John Green’s bestselling 2012 novel, The Fault in our Stars, it’s the story of a 16-year-old cancer patient who is forced by her parents to attend a support group, where she meets and subsequently falls in love with another patient who has lost a leg to bone cancer. “The very fact that the story revolves around cancer makes it seem heavy and intense. But we’ve turned it into a beautiful love story which plays out lightly between these two main characters. I’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible which is why we decided on this title that has the ring of a rhyme, like Bunty aur Babli,” explained Mukesh.

When it was pointed out to him that Kizie is not a common Indian name, he acknowledged that they had imported it from Africa because it is a perfect fit for their leading lady. Manny, on the other hand, is a common name across countries and unusual enough to spark of interest.

The first-time director pointed out that as one of Bollywood’s best known casting directors, he was sure when he met her, seven years after Rockstar, that Sanjana is best suited to play Kizie. “As for Sushant, I was the one who got him his first break, Kai Po Che! and during the shoot of PK where again I was the casting director, I had told him that whenever I directed my first film, he would be in it and he had replied that he would always be there for me. Four days ago, he reminded me of that. In an age of empty words, he has kept his promise,” exulted Mukesh.

And why Jamshedpur? He reasoned that the city happily welcomed people from across the country and gave them a home there. “So you have a South Indian living next to a Bengali family, while a Parsi and a Bihari could be neighbours. I needed a place with a small town vibe and had heard a lot about Jamshedpur from Imtiaz (Ali) and R Madhavan. When I came here for recee, I knew instantly that this was where I wanted my love story to take root,” he avered.

Rucha Pathak, Chief Creative Officer, Fox Star Studios, which is producing the romantic drama, is happy that finally the stars have aligned for their Indian adaptation of The Fault in our Stars. “We’re especially happy that the script that we’ve been developing over the last few years is seeing the start of shoot and the title itself has come so organically from the Indian characters in the film. Kizie and Manny are characters from the imagination of Suprotim Sengupta who wrote the screenplay and Shashank Khaitan who gave them wonderful voices through his dialogues. Mukesh now is going to bring them to life,” she asserted.