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Nawazuddin Siddiqui is not just a name but a phenomenon India is proud to have. At the top of his acting game, he has been awarded the honour of Best Actor for Haraamkhor. But what scares him is the fear that we might be heading towards the demise of our film industry. Find out more in the interview below-
Q: The treatment of Raman Raghav 2.0 seems very interesting as it is violent without being gory. How difficult was it to bring it on screen as most of the times, violence and gore go hand in hand?
Nawazuddin Siddiqui: You are right. Whenever we think of violence, images of bloodshed flash in our mind. But if you come to think of it, it is not necessary that there has to be blood when one says violence, even talks can be violent. Many times, for people ‘talks’ lead to committing suicide or to kill someone. I think it begins with talks only. I think the biggest weapon happens to be ‘words’ or ‘talks’. Raman Raghav 2.0 revolves around this theme.
Q: Rightly so, the dialogues in the trailer are interesting too. But do you add a little bit of your own element to them, or prefer to stick to the written word?
Nawazuddin Siddiqui: It depends. Some scripts and some dialogues allow you to do that because you feel a sense of filling in those blanks. But many times, the things that are already written do not allow you to do that. Especially in Raman Raghav 2.0, the dialogues in the film did not allow me to improvise. I think the only person who has improvised in the film is Anurag Kashyap.
You know, the biggest mistake that an actor makes here is to think that adding dialogues to the script is what improvisation is. It is not. People think that in Bollywood, because we have a lot of verbosity, so we think that till the time we have not spoken extra words, we have not improvised.Nawazuddin Siddiqui
One can improvise without saying anything. It can be done with what you are thinking, the way you are looking. The director has told you to think till a limit, but you surpass it. Thought is what is essential in the process of improvising.
Q: Anurag Kashyap still discovers something new in you every time both of you team up. Does he surprise you as well?
Nawazuddin Siddiqui: Of course! When i worked with him for the first time in Dev D or Black Friday, I was extremely raw. I did not have any idea about many things. The scene that I did in front of Kay Kay Menon happened because I had trust in Kashyap, that I can do anything in front of him. He gives such a support behind the camera unknowingly, that an actor should take an advantage of that. I am a greedy actor and I want to take advantage of that quality of the director, who allows you to do that.
Back in the day I used to think, Anurag is a genius and such an intelligent director…I would be like him after 10-12 years. Now after these many years, when I worked with him on Raman Raghav 2.0, I thought I have grown a little bit but he has grown so much. I am always trying to catch him and his thought. You know what is interesting about working with him? He allows me to think that when he is standing behind the camera, main duniya ki sabse achhi acting kar doonga. He gives me that confidence. I think this relationship between an actor and a director is very important and if one lacks that, it is visible. This 70 mm is nude and whatever you think is visible on it. I’ll share something with you. Whenever I watch a film, I don’t listen to the dialogues but look at their eyes while they perform. Or when one is quiet and another actor is talking, I watch. I wonder, is he actually listening to what the other person is saying? The actor gets caught there, and you get to know how good or bad he is.Nawazuddin Siddiqui
Q: Point well made! But the more you get involved, the more it exhausts you. Right?
Nawazuddin Siddiqui: Definitely! If you take somethings back from the character, the character also takes a lot from you. At the end of the day you feel completely empty. Many times I feel that if something bad happens in front of me, I wont be affected because I am using up all the emotions and thoughts I have in the characters I am playing. Do I have anything left for real life? Then I get scared. I go back to my village then and forget that I am an actor. I try to find happiness in small small things there and once I start to feel for those things again, then I come back to Mumbai and use that stock of emotions till it gets empty again…and it goes on and on (Laughs)
Q: Speaking of things that might exhaust you, Haramkhor is under the CBFC’s scanner. On the one hand, CBFC questions the maturity of the audience, but when an actor is awarded for his performance, the film is watched and judged by the audience itself. Isn’t it?
Nawazuddin Siddiqui: Absolutely. The audience is the same. Now when I want to improvise in a scene, I have to think a lot. I am not able to improvise openly as I keep thinking if someone will have a problem with it or is someone will point a finger at me. Think about it, where am I improvising from? I am getting it from society. Those are the words that I will pick up in a scene. I am getting scared to perform now because of this pressure. If this is going to be the case then? Ratte rataye cheezein karte chale jao..Shola Shabnam banate chale jao. What else can we do? We cannot take any topic. These things are in our society, good or bad. There was a film Main Hoon Na, in which the theme of a student falling in love with a teacher was there. People were getting happy watching that, we are playing on the same theme in a real zone, then what’s the problem?
Q: We will keep fighting these small issues which would eventually be the cause of the demise of our industry.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui: Exactly. That is what is happening. I always say that it is wonderful that we live in a country where we have so many topics and stories to tell in comparison to other countries. Our youth is very energetic and a lot of things are happening around us all the time. This was our only weapon which could take our cinema to the international level and if they take this away from us, then what will everyone think of our industry? We were playing with songs, hero-heroine-villain fight...for the last 60 years. Now new directors have come with such interesting topics to make films on. If this wont be acceptable then we would be making what we were making for the last many decades, and Hollywood would take over the entire market. The young generation has all cinema at the touch of a button. They will compare us with world cinema and feel regret.
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