Irrfan was a genius: Omi
The passing of veteran actor Irrfan Khan left an impact on fans as well as the industry, including actor Omi Vaidya. For those who don’t know, he played the lovable Chatur Ramalingam from 3 Idiots and was last seen in the Bollywood film Blackmail playing a character called Boss DK. Omi, who played late actor’s boss, recalls his positive experience working with him. “Blackmail was the last Bollywood movie in which I acted with the wonderful Irrfan. You watch a lot of actor’s work when you come on set, they sort of meet your expectation of what you’re going to see — they’re loud, they’re big and they perform in a way that makes sense but Irrfan was very different. He was really quiet. He didn’t talk much to anyone. He was focused on the work and the way he acted was something very unexpected. Many times he didn’t really know his lines and I wondered why doesn’t he know his lines? He had one word — something like achcha and he didn’t know what it was and I wondered why would he do this? The reason I realised is that he wanted to have a natural reaction to what I was saying. When you already know what you’re going to say, you then have a predetermined idea of how you’re going to say it. But when you don’t know your lines and you just hear somebody talking, you naturally react and that was very interesting to see. It reminded me of how I worked in The Office with Steve Carell. It reminded me of the way he worked, because he also would just not know his lines and it didn’t really make sense in the scene but when you watched the replay you would go achcha... this is a genius right here!” recollects the actor, who re-entered the Indian scene with the new season of his web series Metro Park In Quarantine. Omi plays the role of Kannan in the show along with Ranveer Shorey, Pitobash and Purbi Ghosh among others. “If you know Kannan, he’s a very anxious uptight fellow. He’s pretty paranoid and the paranoia is a part of our lives now and people are uncomfortable staying more than six feet away wearing full head masks — distrusting their own family because of exposure and stuff. That whole personality is sort of shown in Kannan,” Omi says.