Maneesh’s guidance was important: Shah Rukh

A more than two-decade long illustrious career with close to 100 movies, but superstar Shah Rukh Khan says he felt incompetent filming his upcoming drama Fan. The 50-year-old actor believes without director Maneesh Sharma’s guidance, he would not have been able to do justice to the character of Gaurav.

Fan shows Shah Rukh in double avatars—a superstar, Aryan Khanna and his young look-alike admirer Gaurav. While Aryan is close to how the Dilwale star is in real life, it took him some time to understand the psyche of a fan.

“I won’t say it was easy because I was playing a movie star, the way I do in real life so it does take you away from the real world... Maneesh and the whole team had a great understanding of how Gaurav was. 50 per cent of what you see Gaurav is a physical transformation—prosthetics and the VFX have been used. 100 per cent Gaurav is Maneesh’s vision. I don’t think I have done 100 per cent of what Maneesh may have wanted because he was very clear about it,” Shah Rukh told reporters here. The actor said he is fine with taking credit for a lot of characters he had played in his career, but for this particular role he had to go by the thought process the director had.

“I wouldn’t have been able to play the role. I just knew the superficiality of fan before Maneesh told me the depth and how well understood was Gaurav. If I achieve what Maneesh wanted then I will be very happy. I don’t know what I was playing; I was just following Maneesh’s instructions.”

SRK was all praise for the Band Baaja Baaraat helmer and his team for “bearing with him.” “I was the oldest on the set; all these kids were very patient with me. Wearing the prosthetics wasn’t easy; I used to get irritated as the sweat used to stick on the face. But they bore with me. We have worked very hard so that it does not look unreal. Also, as I am a known face so it is not easy to play a 50-year-old and then do a more than half-age character,” he said.

Shah Rukh also shared that the character of Aryan Khanna will not have any flamboyance, a superstar is attached with usually. For Fan, Maneesh made Shah Rukh re-enact some of his famous scenes but the actor revealed he was not able to get it right at times.

“Maneesh wanted me to do some of my earlier scenes and when I did, he would say, ‘It does not feel like the way you did it then.’ I used to wonder how this is possible. It was nerve-wracking. I was not able to do my own stuff that was shameful,” he said.

“After Fan, Hindi films will be looked up to in the terms of what we can do with visual effects and make-up,” he adds.