Akshay Oberoi: I have seen Mardaani and we have made Flesh, so I know it’s different

Akshay Oberoi has impressed us with his performances in films like Pizza, Laal Rang, Gurgaon, Kaalakandi, and others. The actor is also making a mark in the digital world and has been a part of web series like The Test Case, Hum Tum And Them, Illegal, and others.

Akshay’s new web series Flesh starts streaming on Eros Now today, and we recently interacted with him about the series, his experience of working with Swara Bhasker, and more.

Here are some snippets from our interaction with the actor…

You play a negative role in Flesh; tell us something about your character…

I feel I have more fun playing negative parts. They are more freak and unpredictable and you can do whatever you want with them; sometimes when you play a good person, a person who fits into the society, there are certain boundaries that you have to work in. In this, Taj can do anything, and he can say anything and that’s how we went about it. There were scenes written, there were dialogues written, but my director Danish Aslam would often just run the camera and let me be. He would tell me what he wants from the scene and let me do what I wanted to do. Trust me I am actually a good person in real life, but I enjoyed every minute of playing the character.

The trailer gives us a hint that your character might be homosexual or bisexual, so are there some shades there in the character?

That’s nice that you picked it up and because you picked it up I would say yes, there is a little bit of that. I would say he (character) is pansexual; he would want to have sex with anything, I think that’s the kind of guy he is. He runs a flesh trade, so he has access to it as well.

In the trailer, your look has also grabbed our attention; the hair colour, and the clothes that you are wearing, so tell us how this look was decided, and did you give your inputs in it?

Danish had a lot in his mind; he kind of knew what the guy looked like. He and I are buddies, he knows me in and out, and he was very particular that this guy should stand out. We worked a lot on the look, at first he didn’t want the beard and I thought the beard would work, so we went back and forth on a lot of things. The white hair was completely his idea; he had a very clear image that the guy has white hair. Actually, I got my ears pierced for Flesh which I have kept ever since I have got that pierced. So, yes we did a lot of look tests, we tried different clothes, and there was a lot that went into the look because if look fails the character fails.

How was your experience of working with Swara Bhasker?

Actually, because this is a cat and mouse, we don’t meet till the very end. But, Swara and I have worked together before in a show called It’s Not That Simple which is a romantic web series that Voot had made. I love working with her, I think the better actor you are working with, the better you are. I always look for good actors to work with. I hope we do our third project together.

The trailer of Flesh reminds of Rani Mukerji starrer Mardaani (2014) and there would be comparisons with the film. What do you have to say about it?

That was a very good film and I enjoyed watching it. I think Tahir (Raj Bhasin, the antagonist of Mardaani) was great and Rani is always great, and it’s always nice to have comparisons with good actors and good films. But, I really don’t have much to say about it. I think when people will watch it they will realise that this is different and I know it as I have seen Mardaani and we have made Flesh, so I know it’s different.

You started with movies and now, we mainly get to see in more web series. So, do you feel that you are getting better offers in the digital world and Bollywood filmmakers were not offering you roles that would tap your talent as an actor?

I think you are right, but I never looked at it like movies vs OTT, I was looking for good roles. The movie business is a much bigger dhanda, there are so many things that happen in it, there’s a distributor, there’s an exhibitor, the costs are high, and the stakes are higher. So, I think in my journey, I didn’t have godfathers, didn’t have all those other elements, so people weren’t making films for me and in my earlier films, while critically I got some decent acclaim, I never had a box office hit. So, at some point when OTT opened up, they were looking for actors that they trusted, they thought they could do a good job, and bigger stars were not willing to come down to OTT, so I just jumped on to that bandwagon. For me the priority was to act, it didn’t matter which medium it was on. I wanted to do a variety of roles like in one year I was able to do Hum Tum And Them, Illegal, Flesh, and there’s one more series coming up where I play a hardcore drug addict. I got to play a cricketer in Inside Edge season 3. My high is from the acting and not from money and stardom. My high is when I come home each day and I feel wow I had fun on set today, and I think OTT offered me that.

What’s the update on KTina with Disha Patani, any plans of starting the shoot again?

I and Disha shot for eight days in Chandigarh for KTina, and then I had another project and she had another project. Then we were supposed to resume at the end of March, but obviously because of COVID-19 that did not happen. Now, I don’t know, I think Ekta ma’am (Kapoor) will be the best to tell us what the future course for that movie is. But the other films that I have shot are Madam Chief Minister with Richa Chadha, so that’s done and I finished the remake of Thiruttu Payale 2 with Vineet Kumar Singh and Urvashi Rautela. We are doing the dubbing of it. I hope we finish KTina because I love that film it’s a romantic chick-flick kind of a movie, I haven’t done anything like that before.