Emraan Hashmi feels he is back in a box office safe zone with Raja Natwarlal , after taking an experimental path with films like Ghanchakkar and Ek Thi Daayan . “This is where I can confidently push the buttons, with a fair idea of what the audience likes. The film has songs, dances, kisses, the works,...” says Emraan.
He has his eyes on the box office with films like Raja Natwarlal , but is equally focussed on taking up films like Dibakar Banerjee’s Shanghai . “I need to do that as an actor. Ek Thi Daayan was an evolved film and I equally liked Shanghai . With Ghanchakkar , we knew we were doing something radical. I know that some people got irked that the film had an open ending and the hero doesn't get the money, but that is how the film was meant to be,” he explains.
Raja Natwarlal sees him in the company of director Kunal Deshmukh, with whom he has worked in Jannat, Jannat 2 and Tum Mile . “I know Kunal since the time he worked as an assistant director in Zeher . He respects my acting capabilities and I like his tone of filmmaking. We are friends off the sets and thorough professionals at work,” says Emraan.
The actor has plunged headlong into what a mainstream film requires - dancing and pulling off con acts. I play a small-time conman who cheats people at a railway station or taxi stand for small sums. But he dreams big and backed by revenge, plays a game worth Rs. 5000 crore,” he says.
The transformation of a small-time crook to a scamster happens with the guidance of Paresh Rawal, a successful but reclusive conman living in Dharamshala. “Raja is a fumbling, mumbling guy who wants to learn from this conman who is the opposite of him - focussed and disciplined. It’s almost like the mentor-student relationship in Kungfu Panda where the teacher wonders why he is stuck with a mess of a student who flips and fails,” Emraan elaborates.
Emraan remembers being awestruck by Rawal’s performance in Naam , as a school boy.
“I might be the 2000th guy saying he is a fantastic actor, but that's the truth. He is creative, intuitive and has terrific comic timing. The mentor-student relationship is equally important like that of the boy and the girl,” says Emraan.
Raja Natwarlal is a vendetta drama, very different from Jannat , even though cricket is a commonality,” underlines Emraan. “Cricket was at the heart of Jannat ’s plot. Here it is the chink in the armour of the character played by Kay Kay Menon. Kunal loves cricket and somehow incorporates it in his films,” laughs Hashmi.
This David vs. Goliath story, he says, places Kunal in a new territory. "This is my tenth film outside Vishesh Films banner and I did Ghanchakkar with UTV. But it's the first for Kunal, like starting from scratch.”
In the pipeline are Ungli directed by Rensil D'Silva and produced by Karan Johar and an international film called Tiger (formerly titled White Lies ), co-produced by Anurag Kashyap. “We’ve finished the film and it’s awaiting release. It's a film I am truly excited about,” winds up Emraan.
