tabloid! caught up with Hrithik Roshan to find out more about Bang Bang!, a Bollywood remake of Tom Cruise film Knight and Day. The film was extensively shot in the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, earlier this year. The actor, who has had a turbulent year, with brain surgery and separation from his wife Sussanne, opens up about the challenges he’s faced, and how he overcame them.
Excerpts from the interview:
How was the experience of filming action sequences of ‘Bang Bang!’ in Abu Dhabi?
When you make an action film, there is a huge demand on your brain to focus. The action sequences need to be precise. It can be a physically challenging task, but in an environment such as Abu Dhabi, it was wonderfully easy. The infrastructure is just laid out in such a way that it makes shooting those action sequences easy. Its skyline is fantastic. The fans are fantastic there and they all help in dissolving clutter in your mind. The city just helps you clear your thoughts and you can just focus a lot more. It was the ideal place to shoot a film such as Bang Bang!. My favourite moment arrived when I had to drive on Abu Dhabi roads. It’s so wide. Where else in the world can you imagine roads like those? I remember driving around in an F1 car. It was an experience that I will never forget.
You recently underwent brain surgery to remove clots. Did you have reservations doing stunts after that for Bang Bang!?
No. Fortunately, I was under the practise of building my mental muscles by that time. Right from the beginning, I had conquered the world of attaining the physical muscle.
But before my surgery, I was trying to get my life right in the sense that we carry these burdens of anxiety, guilt and assumptions in our lives every day. We often assume that things will go wrong and manage to build those illusions in our heads. But I was already in the process of exploring the possibility of living a life without those burdens before my surgery. Just before I got operated, I applied some simple rules to my life. I educated myself in improving my quality of life through practical thinking. So, when I was told about the brain clot and that I was close to death, I did not go into it with assumptions. I looked at the evidence in front of me and that spoke volumes. It said there was a 2 per cent chance that something could go wrong during my surgery. But I realised that it was a tiny margin and it meant that among thousands of such surgeries, very few had gone wrong. There were no assumptions made at that time and, therefore, there was no fear. Objectivity often removes the cloak of fear from our heads. Since I was fearless, I could train my mind to be practical. In matters that were under my control, I executed those tasks to the best of my abilities. For my surgery, I got the best doctor to operate and arranged for the best team who would work on my skull. So, when the operation was going on, I was singing songs and I felt strangely at peace about doing my job well.
Lying there, I had this feeling in my head that it would all work out fine because I had done my bit. It was a cakewalk after that. Now when I look back at that episode, it was such a great experience for me to grow as a person. I am now a stronger person. I felt the same victorious feeling when I completed Bang Bang!. The emotional turmoil, the physical injury and the burden of whether the film will ever get completed did not stand in my way. I eliminated thoughts such as: will I ever be ok?
How did you prepare to play the role of secret operative Rajveer Nanda?
I enjoyed playing the role of Rajveer thoroughly. During the filming of Bang Bang!, I made a great discovery: Rajveer was me and his nature resembled mine. I am known as this guy who is famous for getting into a closed room and locking himself in to study his character. But for Bang Bang!, I didn’t spend a second in preparation. I just read the script and the role came naturally to me. I am Rajveer.
How easy is to look cool on the big screen? And doesn’t Hollywood do cool well?
Let me tell you that it’s not cool to wait for cool. If you want to be cool, then learn to master the art of being yourself. Just be relaxed. It’s true that Hollywood does cool well because they have the concept of cool figured out in their heads. Something about their lives and the way they communicate makes them seem less focused on themselves. Even the children there, I found, are more communicative. Here [in India], we have our culture but we are still very inhibited with what society wants. We have a lot more assumptions about ourselves and feel the need to perfect ourselves a lot more. It brings the cool factor down. Cool is about being fearless and being not overly protective about yourselves. Cool is about not staying in your comfort zone. Remember, when you step out of your comfort zone, you become a cool person. Even if you think you are looking bad or if things are not working out in your life, be ok with it and you are going to look cool. Trust me.
Have you watched ‘Knight and Day’ starring Tom Cruise?
I have watched Knight and Day once in my life. But that was before I got a call from Sid [director Siddharth Anand] wanting to remake it. But while were working on the script, we went back to a few scenes in that film. But I didn’t need to watch the film again because Bang Bang! is different from its original. In fact, if you had not known that it was the official remake, you may not have guessed that its origin was that [film].
