Vineet Kumar on Taking Commando Training for ‘Bard of Blood’

Ahead of the release of Netflix’s Bard of Blood, The Quint caught up with Vineet Kumar Singh of Mukkabaaz fame on the sets of the show in Mandawa near Jaipur. He spoke about working with Netflix, better opportunities for actors in the web space and more. Here are excerpts from the interview:

Q. You’re playing a character who is a commando, so he’s addicted to opium, finds humour in situations and is also ruthless. So, when you’re playing a character like this how do you look at these different qualities and get it all together?

You have to get into their state of mind, you have to understand them when you approach a character. So, whatever is necessary for that you do them all together, so we put together a lot of videos and references. That helped a lot.

He’s a commando, he is trained in this, and not just a routine commando, so there was a different kind of training for that. How you move with guns, how you carry them, if there is a situation like that, then how do you use guns in that.

Do you generally like to prepare or do you rely on spontaneity? Or do you prepare only if needed? How does it work?

It’s a mixture of both. Right from our childhood when we’re giving an exam, even if you’re giving an exam in grade five also, you have to prepare. And depending on what the paper is like you have to take spontaneous decisions also, so it is the same here. If you have absolutely no preparation then you will not be able to approach it, plus you have to be mentally open. So, after a lot of preparation I forget everything and then whatever the situation is I react, because the location also sometimes is such that it’s very different from what you would have imagined. The moves and the choreography is different, how your co-actor reacts may be different, so you can’t really assume that this is the line that is going to come and I have to do this.

Video Editor: Veeru Krishan Mohan