Body turned blue, but we didn’t give up: Darshan
For any actor, to step into the shoes of a sportsperson and play him or her convincingly on screen, can be a herculean task. But Darshan Kumar, who played a footballer in Mary Kom (2014) and will next be seen as a boxer in Toofan, says it was “indeed tough” but also a great learning experience. “Sportspersons have years of experience and training. And for actors, to portray their journey on screen within a span of few months is really tough. To get the right body language itself takes a lot of training apart from working on the particular sport,” Darshan adds.
After working in Toofan, where he plays a negative role, Darshan realised how tough it would have been for his Mary Kom co-star Priyanka Chopra Jonas to impersonate the boxing champion on screen. “While shooting for Mary Kom, I’ve seen Priyanka shoot for 12 hours and undergo boxing training as well. But when I started training for Toofan, I realised how much she must have worked on herself to step into Mary Kom’s shoes,” he shares.
The actor has undergone two months of intense training for the new Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra directorial. “We used to train for eight or nine hours for boxing. And when we started shooting, it would go on for 13 hours and we would only get an hour’s break for lunch. We used to do retake after retake to get the body language right on screen,” he says.
Darshan finds it “fun and challenging” to do such parts -- even if it means getting bruised sometimes.
The actor recalls that while filming for Toofan, he and his co-star Farhan Akhtar would get hurt many times.
“During boxing scenes, Farhan and I used to get so many punches and our body would turn blue with bruises. Our bodies would give up but we never lost our strength. We never complained and always gave our best,” he signs off.