Boman Irani: 3 Idiots’ Virus came from my childhood lisp and Alyque Padamsee’s walk

Boman Irani recently spent an hour with the students of SRCC, divulging some off-screen secrets from his life and even singing for his young audience. At the college’s youth conference, the actor, who is known for playing a heartless dean in more movies than than one, shared how he was a perpetually nervous kid and how he came up with the portrayal of Virus in 3 Idiots.
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I was terrified of men
Boman might have famously played the character of a strict professor more than once, but while talking to the students about how his childhood was not a bed of roses, he said, “I have been brought up by just women, so, as a kid, I was terrified of men. I was a nervous little thing. I was dyslexic, had attention deficiency, and at that time, Aamir Khan had not made a Taare Zameen Par, so everybody just took me for a duffer – that’s what they called me. I did not know what a man looked like, so I wet my pants if I ever heard the man who was our neighbour yelling at his kids – I was terrified of the male form.”
Munna Bhai MBBS was supposed to be a flop
Apparently, Shah Rukh Khan is not the only one who turned down Munna Bhai MBBS. Boman Irani, who played the ‘laughing’ dean in the movie, had also rejected it when the role was first offered to him. He said to the students, “When Vidhu Vinod Chopra had offered Munna Bhai to me, I had said no. He told me that you play the dean of a medical college and you keep laughing – it did not make any sense to me. I did not want to do the movie just because they were paying me well. But then Vinod Chopra asked to meet Raju Hirani, and when I met him, I thought, ‘Forget it, man. If I do this movie, I get to hang out with such a lovely person – he is so honest towards his work.’ So, I did Munna Bhai just because I wanted to hang out with Raju Hirani, otherwise, the movie was supposed to be a flop, according to me. I don’t have a lot of friends in the industry, but even today, Raju is my dearest friend in the industry.”
Virus is a mix of Boman and Alyque Padamsee
Talking about his second role as the stern professor – Virus in 3 Idiots – Boman said, “When I was a photographer, Shiamak Davar saw me, and said, ‘You belong on the stage.’ He took me to Alyque Padamsee and told him to audition me. The character required me to sing, so when I sang for them, Alyque, walking towards me – in his typical style with hands on his back and the paunch sticking out – said, ‘I know talent when I see it, and this is not talent.’ But Shiamak said that he wouldn’t choreograph the play if he didn’t take me, and that’s how things happened for me. I had a lisp as a kid. Till I was in class seven, I did not speak because people used to laugh at me, and I used to think that something was wrong with me. So, when I got 3 Idiots, I decided to use both of these ‘failures’ to my advantage. When I played Virus, I went back to the childhood Boman to talk with a lisp, and copied Alyque’s body language when I was imagining how Virus would walk.”
WATCH: Boman Irani 'PRAISES' Shiamak Davar