‘A FLOP IS NOT THE END OF THE WORLD’
He can’t feel detached, but experience does help actor Arjun Kapoor to deal with success and failure better
Arjun Kapoor’s next release, Namaste England, sees him team up with Parineeti Chopra, his co-star from his debut film, Ishaqzaade (2012). He says that while not much has changed in their personal equation, this film fell into his lap at the right time, professionally speaking.
“When Vipul (Shah, filmmaker) came to me with the film, Parineeti had already signed it. This film begins with a happily ever after, and it was a bizarre continuation of how Parma and Zoya in Ishaqzaade didn’t get a happily ever after. We didn’t live that facet of the romance, and this film gave us that exact time frame, so it was exciting,” says Arjun. “There’s a certain simplicity in the film because everything today is so complex, chaotic. Also, who doesn’t want to watch romantic comedies?”
His next films are Dibakar Banerjee’s Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar, again with Parineeti; and then Raj Kumar Gupta’s India’s Most Wanted. He plays an intelligence officer in the latter and a police officer in the former. From these choices, it seems Arjun is veering towards a more serious image, but he says it’s not intentional. “I signed Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar when I was finishing Mubarakan (2017). It started being made eight months later, and will now release after Namaste England, so it might seem like a trajectory of going a certain direction,” he says, reiterating that this isn’t so — what he really wants is to explore the whole spectrum.
“I’ve always moved in a direction where I want to do all kinds of films. Also, actors are mercurial by nature. There hasn’t been a paradigm shift in my thinking; [but] maturity breeds a certain amount of confidence to carry certain kinds of films,” he explains.
Arjun has had his fair share of ups and downs so far. But now, he says, he feels more confident of being able to carry a film on his shoulder and also live with its box-office fate. “You need to stop having the fear of success and failure at some point. I’m not good at dealing with failure. I’d say that I’ve become more aware of how to deal with it,” says the actor. “I still have to go through the process, but instead of being in a slump for three months, I can pick up the pieces in three days. I’ve seen my share of highs and lows, so you realise that a flop is not the end of the world. You cannot change every Friday. People’s perception of you can change .... [But] when you start working with a good set of people and do what you love doing, you’ll be able to not get carried away by success.” Having said that, Arjun adds, “I don’t think any actor will ever be able to be detached — you need to feel the butterflies in the pit of your stomach with every release. You need to have something at stake to do a film.”