STRIKING BIG NUMBERS

From last year to now, your journey has been remarkable. How do you look back at the last one year?

Sometimes, I need to pinch myself. As an actor, I was always excited. I knew that these many releases would happen in a year. But there was this nervous energy inside as I wondered what kind of response my films would get, how it would change my personal and professional life and whether the graph would rise or fall. That exciting time bomb is always ticking within me, especially when I am shooting for something right now or when I have releases ahead.

Last year was full of that. I knew that a certain film would be releasing and I would be promoting it, but at the same time, I would think of the fate of some other release. It was nice to know that yet another film was about to release and I would be promoting it, hoping it will go well. It was a magical year for me to know that all my releases and performances were received well. I was very charged. That is the validation that every actor is dying for. When that happens, you feel like giving a 100 per cent to the film you are shooting for. Once it releases, we forget the process. URI is one of the toughest shoots I have ever done.

So, what are your criteria for a signing a film?

The story! It was a priority before URI and it will always remain a priority. When I read a script or hear a narration, I do not read it from the point of view of an actor. I read it or listen to the narration from the point of view of the audience, who has paid 300-350 bucks to watch the film.

If a reading or a narration moves me in some way, it hits home and I feel excited to discuss it with my family and friends, that is the box I want to tick. The rest follows – whether it is something I have done before or not, the director, the writers and the producers. The first thing is that the story must hit the bull's-eye.

Two important aspects of the film are the physicality and the emotions. Which was your most physically taxing and emotionally unnerving scene?

When I interacted with ex-Special Forces commandos, who have been on various missions and have since hung up their boots, I did not ask them about their missions. I was trying to grasp their weaknesses. I really wanted to make Vihaan real. The only way you can make a person appear real is by showing his weaknesses to the audience.

At the script level, Vihaan was projected as this hero who could kill 10 people at a time. I wanted to show his vulnerabilities too, so that the audience could see his human side. And, I discovered more about this when I spoke to one of the ex-Special Forces commandos. I wanted to ask them what scares them. We all know how brave they are, how superhuman they are. Special Forces operations generally take place at night. Nobody knows about them because they function in stealth mode. Would you feel like having dinner if you knew you had to cross a hostile border at 2 am for a secret, deadly mission?

That's what I asked them too. What is it like the evening before a mission? Do you feel hungry? Do you have dinner? Some of them might not return in the morning. That thought is always with them; it is a realistic thought. They have this habit of playing a sport every day with their teammates. I asked if they keep to that routine, or go through a special drill or regroup and chat. If they did feel scared, did they convey that to their teammates or hide it? If they did convey it, how would the others pump them? What is the mood?

They said they also get scared: hamaari bhi ego hoti hai, hum nahin batate kisiko. They feel that if they say it, then the fear will spread. They believe that seeing them overcome their fear gives the other person strength. It's like, even though you are scared, you are facing it and moving forward. When I learnt these things, I thought I should imbibe them in Vihaan too. The soft and the vulnerable sides have to be there.

The scene where Mohit Raina's character, Karan, is martyred and Vihaan is at the funeral, that scene was very tricky. Because we are in attention mode and I have to convey my emotion without moving at all. I had to stand in attention during the war cry and the salute, but inside I had already broken down. I didn't know how I would show that and it's not really something you can prep for. You cannot rehearse it at home. You have to go through the emotions and you don't really know what will emerge. It is a very unknown space. You cannot visualise it like a normal scene, where you know, I will do this and then that.

Here you don't have dialogue, you are just standing and you cannot move. You know you have to feel it and you're thinking, if it happens it's great but what if it doesn't? Luckily, what happened was that the little girl in the scene, Reva, is just so good. She is one of the best actors I have ever worked with. Before that day of the shoot, we had not heard her scream even once. She would call me mamu because I play her uncle in the film. Another emotional thing was that she has actually lost her father in real life. So her real-life mamu is like her father. When I was playing that role, she bonded with me and for her, it became an altogether different thing. It was hitting very close to home.

When it was time for that scene, this soft-spoken girl gave an amazing take. We weren't even looking at her in that scene. There's a close-up sequence of her looking at the coffin and the way she screamed in that scene, I can't even tell you! She gave a war cry and something happened. I was standing there, hearing her scream like that with everything she has, all the emotions coming from inside her while she really cried in that shot.

The whole unit was clapping after that shot and they had tears in their eyes. I automatically had those tears and if it wasn't for that kid, Reva, in that scene, I couldn't have emoted the way I did. She really gave everything to the scene and it motivated all of us to do the same. The shot when I cannot finish my war cry, when I struggle through it – it automatically came that way. I really wanted to break down but I couldn't. Some moments just happen so realistically for you that you feel blessed about the fact that there was some vibe on that set, on that day, that let it come out like this.

In those last scenes, where the surgical strike was actually being shown, it was interesting to see that even though there wasn't any dialogue, the film didn't drop its pace for even a second.

Yes, the last 30 or 40 minutes were just action. I think Aditya (Dhar) always planned it that way. He wanted to make a film that shows the military in a real and authentic way but also caters to the masses. But even though he had that in mind, he didn't want to cater to an unreal action space. The action sequences were planned to be very messy. He didn't want it neat. It had to look like a brawl. When people fight each other, they don't how they are going to land the punch; he wanted that. Since it was the army fighting, it could look like they were trained to fight, but it had to look authentic, dirty and messy and grungy.

And also ruthless.

Of course! It had to be ruthless because Special Forces commandos, in action, are known to be very efficient. They won't take half an hour to kill you. They are looking for ways to kill you in one minute. Their strategies are designed that way. We also had to think along those lines. It couldn't be an action sequence where it's just going on and because it's a Bollywood film. It had to look like I was punching to kill him. And Stefan Richter, the action director, was just so good with that.

When you listen to the real-life stories, they are so engaging. We knew that if we could represent that reality on the big screen, then people wouldn't miss the dialogue. They would just be so enthralled by what was going on. Also, you have to create a situation where the audience feels that the men are actually at a risk of losing their lives. We tried our level best to represent it all accurately and we feel so good that it has clicked with people.

Have you congratulated yourself yet, Vicky? What is the benchmark of success for you?

I have never felt that way after the success of a film. When scenes like the funeral scene and the action sequences take everything out of you, that is when you feel you have given everything as an actor. That is when you feel like patting yourself on the back.

When your film does well, the world pats your back. That's when I don't pat my own back as a film's success is the result of team effort. If a single piece goes missing from that puzzle, it will not be the film that we see in theatres.

You feel like patting your back while shooting the film, when you have connected with the character, given a good take and your director gives you the validation that you did a good job in a particular scene. That is when you feel like you have given something back to your job.

Post Raazi, you had told us that you don't mind being labelled.

To me, labelling is like a compliment. If I do a film and people say I am an 'indie actor', it means I have cracked that space. If someone tells me I am an 'action hero', I feel like I have justified my part. If they call me a 'new-age actor', I would feel like I have justified my charact er. These are labels.

Labelling is different from stereotyping. I would be the reason to get stereotyped, not the industry. If similar roles are offered to you, you should take it as a compliment. It means I did a role which was so convincing that people believe I can pull it off.

Stereotyping will happen if I say 'yes' to those projects. According to me, an actor stereotypes himself or herself. What the industry offers you depending on your last release is like a token of appreciation, that what you did was so believable that they really see you in that particular role. That, for me, is a compliment.