POPULAR MOVIE STAR SAIF ALI KHAN REVEALS HOW A BRAVE NEW APPROACH HAS TRANSFORMED HIS CAREER
TWO of the biggest blockbusters of 2022 have Saif Ali Khan in contrasting roles and show that he is now in the most exciting chapter of his long, distinguished career.
Hotly anticipated films Adipurush and Vikram Vedha will add momentum to a recent run of performance-driven projects for an actor in top gear. Not surprisingly, he is enjoying the wide variety of roles and feels motivated to cross more acting horizons.
Eastern Eye caught up with the popular Bollywood star to discuss this exciting new phase of his career, recent film Bunty Aur Babli 2, acting, future hopes and what keeps him inspired.
Is it a coincidence that all your recent projects are different to one another?
I don’t know! I mean it could also be that people are making different movies. It’s not really me choosing specifically to be different, but there is a choice to be made it seems. I’m a little aware. I was just telling somebody recently that I don’t want to fall into a trap, you know, of having to colour my hair green or something to look different in the next movie because you’ve got this thing of being an actor who’s playing different parts. There are traps everywhere, so I’m going to try to avoid that by playing a classic hero cop and classic hero fireman in my next two movies.
Is it fair to say that you are looking for performance-driven roles ahead of starry ones?
Absolutely! I don’t want to play the star. Even if you do play starry roles, you learn from my teachers in cinema, who I’m obviously nothing like – Al Pacino and people like this, who would look like stars, but avoid playing the star and kind of find a way to get in to the character and make it more about acting than looking good or whatever.
You’re great in dramatic roles, but is it fair to say that comedy is still the most natural genre for you?
I don’t know actually whether it’s still the most natural genre. It certainly was before and something I do enjoy tremendously. I think people like to see me in that when things are not being taken too seriously, so it’s great. I love it and it is something that I want to do.
What was it like teaming up with Rani Mukerji again after all these years for Bunty Aur Babli 2?
It was really nice. (Laughs) She’s the boss now (of Yash Raj Films)! So, there was that. But I was just very keen for us to be very good because that’s the only relevant thing. I mean, we have history and have done some very good things in the past, but that was a long time ago and now I just wanted it to work. And it did work. Normally my first day is a bit unsure, but here from day one, we were just in the same rhythm again because she’s a good actor. At her best, she is one of our best actresses. She will always make the scene work.
Your Bunty Aur Babli 2 co-star Siddhant Chaturvedi told me he was inspired by how energised you still are despite achieving so much. What keeps you so motivated?
I think it’s a balance for life, taking pride in your work and just making it special. And it is a tremendous privilege to be in front of the camera. I think that’s an attitude that we must have, and how do I entertain the audience. What can I do to just make it better, so that I can go home and have a nice drink when it’s done? You know, when you contemplate your life or midlife crisis, potentially, you say okay, well the wine’s not going to get any better and neither are my chats with friends. The only thing that I could improve it with is by working a bit harder. So that the time-out can be more enjoyable.
You are hugely in demand right now. What made you step into a sequel like Bunty Aur Babli 2, even though you didn’t play your character in part one?
Well, (producer) Aditya Chopra called me and said ‘this is what it is, are you interested in taking this forward’. A lot of my movies were ones I wasn’t the first choice for, so I don’t really have an issue with that, provided it’s all clear. He was very clear, and I said yes. I was also very keen on reuniting with Yash Raj Films because we haven’t worked together in a while. My producer used the word ‘homecoming’ in his text and that’s what it was. I’m not very sentimental about these things, in the sense that films come and go. Each film has its own kind of equation with the director and producer. Provided it’s all clear and everyone’s discussed everything, it doesn’t really matter whose playing what.
The projects you have on the way are incredible. Is this the most exciting phase of your career?
Really, it’s like planting and watching it grow. We did our hard work and chose very carefully. I have to thank my management team for helping me. To take Tanhaji and then Adipurush, and Vikram Vedha. All really exciting projects! There is also a fireman’s role for (production house) Excel. I’m really keen on doing well in those movies, so that I can improve my general stock in the industry.
One of the most anticipated films of 2022 is Vikram Vedha headlined by you and Hrithik Roshan. Does that put pressure on you?
Not really, because it’s a bloody good script and just reads really well. Obviously, on one level, it’s an edge-of-your-seat thriller and on another level, it is like, ‘wow, there is something deep happening here’. It makes you think as well and that doesn’t happen to me every day, where you get a double-edged kind of script. Something that’s working intellectually, but at the same time is just a page turner on the surface of it. I’m excited by it.
Hrithik Roshan (STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)
A lot of people kind of focus on your stardom, but for me you’re a very good actor. What according to you is the secret of a good performance?
I’ve been asked this question so often that I started thinking about it a lot. I’ve never thought about it before. But I like to subvert any kind of ego and play the part for what it is, warts and all, especially if there’s a chance to do that, whether it’s a bad walk, stupid expression or speaking noisily. I shouldn’t talk about others, but I notice some I’ve worked with are not being genuine to the part because they are more concerned with looking good. I think that’s a mistake and it’s not something I’m interested in. So that could be the kind of attitude you’re talking about.
You have lived in the west and know the culture, so are one of the few frontline stars who could do Hollywood films. Why have you resisted doing projects in the west?
You’re right and I might be able to because I am one of the few Indian actors who understands western culture. It is not about language, it’s about culture. How a normal man speaks to his mother in India is different to America. Therefore, an American can never play an Indian, even if he was the right colour and sounding right, because culturally we are alien. So, it’s about understanding another culture and that’s why a lot of guys can’t do it. I could but it also involves a lot of relocation, struggle and starting again. All that kind of stuff, and I am very comfortable here. But this internet is shrinking the world every day. Maybe there will be a Netflix movie or something, where someone would say come over and do it. If it’s within the next three or four years and we’re not too old, maybe we could do it.
Saif Ali Khan(STR/AFP via Getty Images)
Do you carry characters home after you play them?
In a way, yes, but I really thought about something Shah Rukh Khan said about having a big bath and washing it all off and letting it go somehow. There needs to be some ritual and I think it might involve fire or something cleansing, and then whiskey. There should be a ritual where you have to get rid of them. I mean obviously part of them stay with you when you spend so long learning the lines and remember them for a few years afterwards. So that part stays with you, but you need to let it go. There needs to be a ritual. There aren’t enough rituals for things that we do. We have more rituals for religion than we do for life. I need to find that ritual of letting go.
Finally, what is it that inspires you today in life?
I think people who are constantly learning and changing after a certain age, like people working well in their fifties and beyond. People who are engaged and excited about life, and keeping their craft going upwards. So, Amitabh Bachchan inspires me because he’s just getting better and better. The way he speaks Hindi is amazing. Fitness, discipline, and role models change. You know we want to keep making money, keep working hard and not give up, so the role models are more about longevity.
The actor’s evolving style from youth to maturity getty images
Aamir Khan embracing vintage looks with classic charmgetty images
Bold and dramatic changes defining Aamir Khan’s careergetty images
From rugged to refined Aamir Khan’s versatile appearancesgetty images
Memorable film moments showcasing Aamir Khan’s unique stylegetty images
Aamir Khan’s blend of classic and contemporary fashiongetty images
Aamir Khan’s dedication to authentic character portrayals getty images
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A seated Jain enlightened teacherAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Ganesha from JavaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
A Chinese silk painting depicting the BuddhaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
ArdhanarishvaraAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Head of a grimacing yakshaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
NagaAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
The Bimaran casketAshmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Hunia Chawla
A still from rehearsal
Them performing liveNajmuddin Saifuddin Qawwal Group
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5