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‘We never knew we’d become actors’
Tabu reflects on her personal and professional relationship with Ajay Devgn, who, she feels, is ‘family’
Despite working with a number of co-stars in a career spanning two decades, actor Tabu’s closeness to and personal rapport with actor Ajay Devgn is widely known. The two recently teamed up one more time for Golmaal Again that released in October this year, and the actor can’t stop gushing about him.
“Ajay and I go a really, really long way back, from the time we were 13 or 14. He is my brother’s childhood friend and because we all grew up together in a locality in Juhu, he was always a part of the whole boys’ gang while we were just giggling girls, hanging around and trying to get some attention (laughs),” recalls Tabu.
“Then we worked together. For me, working with Ajay really defies so many other norms of working with different people. He’s one of the very few people, working with whom, work doesn’t feel like work. We’ve known each other since we were so young. We didn’t know we would become actors — not me for sure,” the actor muses.
Tabu and Ajay have shared screen space in films such as Vijaypath (1994), Haqeeqat (1995), Thakshak (1999), Drishyam (2015), and most recently in Golmaal Again — their seventh film together.
“I remember when I did Drishyam, it had been 18 years since I [last] worked with him. And it made me realise how your journeys can take you to so many different directions, even away from the people who have been closest to you in our growing up years. We are in the same industry, we work with almost the same people but we never worked with each other. And then we came back to working together again. He is the co-star that I have done maximum films with. He is like family.”
Looking back at her journey, Tabu feels that both she and Ajay have evolved as people and as actors over time. “Both of us have grown in our respective crafts, and in the films that we’ve done. He might not come across as somebody who is very into his craft, but he has a very quiet, subtle, and subliminal process that he submits himself to, and there’s always an endeavour from him to do good work. His focus does not shake when he’s into a shot, and he sees to it that the work is happening properly,” Tabu signs off.