He did justice to the role. I had to practice for 3 months to understand all of that.
Advertisement
Azharuddin is not the first real-life character that you’ve played?
Lately you’ve been doing less work?
Sharing about how hard it is to play a real person as compared to a fictional character, Emraan says, “When I got the first call from the director to play Azhar, I was thrilled because I knew this would be a different experience”.
How much are you in cricket in real life? But there is hypocrisy in this too, because back then if you’d take the DVD of “Basic Instinct”, watch it and it would still be fine.
Emraan looked thrilled on seeing his fans. During the one and half year process of making AZHAR, I learned a lot about the man, the sport, Mohammad Azharuddin helped in giving me some tips on the perspective and yeah, it was a great experience stepping in the shoes of Azhar. I obviously didn’t have a strategic way of functioning, never paid any attention to what would I do next.
We started off the interview by asking Azharuddin if this film is a way of bringing forward his side of his life story. If you see him on news channels he is stoic. That was the biggest draw for me. But it was a completely different ball game to get into the skin of the character. The first approach in this direction was “Awarapan” which is even now referred to as one of my best films. But it is okay because I like to take positivity out of criticism. I wouldn’t call this a faithful biopic. “It could make things or worse or it could make them feel that they were over-reacting”, he added. Azhar is demanding to delete the controversial scenes. What was the real motivation to do Azhar. the controversy part, the inner strength of the cricketer that you just spoke about?
Advertisement
Emraan Hashmi was in New Delhi on May 9 for the promotions of his film. “It’s not like I want to be like this but it’s the kind of roles I keep getting over and over again”. There are going to be people who will be critical.
