If Bollywood actor Abhishek Banerjee decided to grin like a Cheshire cat all the way to the The International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Rocks stage in Abu Dhabi on September 29, we wouldn’t blame him.
He’ll be hosting the annual awards show along with Siddhant Chaturvedi, of Gully Boy fame at Etihad Arena. He is also getting plaudits for his role in Stree 2, which made history as the highest-grossing Hindi film ever earlier this month, and Vedaa alongside John Abraham.
In other words, the actor who doubles as a casting director – he’s worked on No One Killed Jessica and Rock On 2 — is clearly having a moment.
Why Stree 2 was a good idea
Banerjee, who plays Jana in Stree 2, believes the horror-comedy genre is a mash-up that really works. He explains: “Everybody loves comedy in India. Very rarely do we see a comedy film failing in this industry, because I think it’s the best way to release stress. And with horror it becomes this magical fantasy world. Now what happens with horror is that many people do not like it because they get scared. But the minute you combine comedy with horror, the excitement and the thrill just go to the next level, because then you can watch a genre which you were seasoned to watch all these years. And comedy just makes it easier to watch.”
The versatile actor who loves experimenting with his characters, to get their body language just so, to get their diction and vernacular right, played dissimilar characters in his last two movies. He credits his training for being able to jump between roles. “It’s just years and years of training. I mean, when I when I wanted to be an actor, I wanted to do all kind of genres. Wanted to basically play every kind of role possible, catch dialect, understand the milieu of each world I am entering into. I’m getting to do that, and I hope, like you know, people love me for both,” he says.
Will work for food
When he landed in Mumbai, the Bhediya star, was looking for meaty roles that would help him land himself an audience. Venturing into the casting space was born out of necessity. “Mine has always been a journey of an actor who wanted to find employment. I would pick and choose any job I would get that time [in the early Mumbai days]. And it happened to be casting, because I met a very senior casting director, and he was casting for a movie I had auditioned for. I didn’t clear the audition, but I got the job of an assistant casting director, and that continued for many years. I just gave myself to casting because I was not able to find any acting job.”
He posits that while filmmakers were unaware of his talent, he too was not ready to take the leap into the spotlight. “The theatre and camera – both have different styles. It’s different mediums. For me to understand the camera medium, it took some time. Once I cracked that I started doing a lot of short films. So acting became like a part-time job for me, and casting became a full-time job. Eventually, I got the opportunity to be a full-time actor, people gave me roles which were meaty, and there was a lot of faith shown on me,” he explains.
Today, the star is just looking to tell a good story. He says: “I don’t bifurcate my characters, whether it’s good, bad, ugly, or romantic, or comedy, whatever it is, what matters to me is the story. If the story is interesting, I want to be a part of it. If the story is boring, I don’t want to be bothered, as simple as that.
“For me, it’s very, very easy decision. Whenever I’m reading a script, if I can read it in one go, that means I love the I love the script. And if it’s taking me time that immediately tells me that I’m not invested.”
It comes from a need to see purpose behind performance. “I love intense parts, I love drama, I love anything which has to do with the social, moral value system of our society. So if I get that kind of story, I perform better,” he says.
As an actor who invests in a spectrum of roles, from Mirzapur’s sycophant Compounder to the villain in Veeda, how does he divest himself of the darkness that some of these narratives bring? “I don’t know the world is so dark right now, when how do we still manage to stay happy? I’m just a professional actor who’s reading lines, who’s understanding the character, brief from the director, and going and doing my job. It’s easier… In a way, even if I’m doing a dark character, it’s like therapy,” he says, conceding that there was one role that got under his skin.
“I was very young, and I [acted as a] child abuser, that really hit me hard. I was not able to like my character and myself, and it really bothered me. It really caused a lot of tension within me and my relations with my friends and family. I realised that I can’t possibly live like this. Now, my rule is very simple, when I when I reach the vanity and I wear my costume and I’m when I’m in makeup, I’m in the character. The minute I take off my clothes, I take off my costume, I take off my makeup, I’m out of character.”
Banerjee wears the mask of an actor well. But what if…what if he had to choose another route, go down another path? “I’d be a chef,” he says baldly. “I love cooking. Sometimes I like to bake – I feel very bad that I didn’t pursue it. The career, and it can be fruitful too, because those days nobody told me that, you can have a full-fledged career as a chef. But I’m an actor, so I hope one day I’ll play a chef in a film, and I’ll do a pretty good job with it,” he adds.