Hindustan Times ST (Jaipur) - Hindustan Times (Jaipur) - City
‘PEOPLE SAID I COULDN’T BE THE LEAD’
Rajkummar Rao was never the quintessential Bollywood hero, but he is a force to reckon with, winning viewer appreciation, awards, and box office success. But for all his talent, the path to the centre-stage was once blocked by the barb wire of rejection. “Going back four or five years, I can definitely recall a couple of incidents where people told me, ‘We can’t cast you for the lead role; we’d rather take you for some other part.’ I think that’s because they all try and play safe and be secure, because the [financial] risk is really big when it comes to filmmaking,” says Rajkummar. In seven years in Bollywood, he was part of an ensemble cast in Kai Po Che (2013); carried an arthouse film, Shahid (2013), as the solo lead, with a performance that won him a National Film Award; had strong supporting roles in the big hit Queen (2014) and the critically acclaimed Aligarh (2014); and plays a quirky romantic character in this year’s Bareilly Ki Barfi. The 32-year-old says he’s glad things have changed. “It’s a pretty different scenario that we see in [Bollywood] today. Audiences want to see more mainstream actors playing characters first, no matter [if it is] the lead or a supporting role. That outlook has brought about a lot of change,” says Rajkummar, giving credit for this transformation to the newer bunch of filmmakers and writers. “They’re penning amazing stories. They don’t write a script thinking if [certain] actors will do a [certain] part or not. That’s why we see even superstars playing characters,” he adds. Fellow actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui had said that racial bias in Bollywood led to filmmakers not casting top female actors against some male actors. Rajkummar quips that he himself has worked with “some really pretty girls — be it Kangana Ranaut, Sonam Kapoor, Shruti Haasan or Vidya Balan”, but adds, “I can understand where Nawaz is coming from”. He further says, “I don’t think [Nawaz] has anything to worry about, because his talent is bigger than anything.”