Vicky Kaushal | Paul David Martin
When he returned from Varanasi after shooting for Masaan (2015), Vicky Kaushal found it hard to switch back to the “Bambaiya” lingo he had used since childhood. The respect with which people in the pilgrim city spoke to each other had rubbed off on him. It was no longer the “tu-tadak” way of speaking. That role in Masaan stayed with him for the longest time.
That was Kaushal’s first lead role. He is vulnerable and endearing as Deepak, a guy from the Dom community, who wants to help his family dream of a better future, challenges the caste hierarchy and romances an upper-caste girl. His performance leaves an indelible mark.
Three years on and seven films later—five of which released in 2018—Kaushal’s charisma has hardly waned. He has essayed each of his characters with the same passion and sensitivity. Last year, he was a sincere boyfriend in Netflix’s original film Love Per Square Foot. In the anthology of short films, Lust Stories, he played a husband who is too naive to understand his wife’s sexual expectations. He played it with utmost sincerity. In Sanju, actor Sanjay Dutt's biopic, he stole the limelight as best friend Kamli. Raazi brought out the gentleman in him as Alia Bhatt’s sensitive and understanding Pakistani husband. And Anurag Kashyap’s Manmarziyaan saw him as an irresponsible boyfriend.
Each role has been different from the other. The plaudits, he says, motivates him to keep pushing himself as an actor. “It also makes me realise that everything you gain professionally is because of your [hard] work. You need to stay focussed and give your best,” he says. “There are so many good stories coming out, apart from the films I have done. It is such an exciting time to be in the industry.”
He says his choices, so far eclectic, are driven by the stories. “When I first read the script, I should feel affected by the story. There should be some element in it that I want to share with my friends,” he says.
In Uri: The Surgical Strike that releases on January 11, he plays Vihan Shergill, a fictional Army major, who leads his team across the India-Pakistan border. The Aditya Dhar-directed film is based on the September 2016 surgical strike by the Indian Army on terror outfits.
“URI required me to bulk up, besides taking arms and ammunition training.”
The trailer has drawn criticism for being propagandist. But Kaushal had his reasons to do it. The propaganda part, he says, should be discussed only after everyone watches the film. Apart from the story, which he says is inspiring, it was the action sequences that appealed to him. This is the first time he has had to put on weight to play a character, and realised how tough it was. But he is happy. “The journey of preparing for the character took six to eight months. I even shot for Manmarziyaan during that period,” he says. “It required me to bulk up, besides taking military training, and arms and ammunition training.”
In the few films he has done, he has already worked with seasoned directors like Kashyap, Meghna Gulzar, Karan Johar and Rajkumar Hirani, and debutants like Neeraj Ghaywan and Dhar. “[Seasoned directors] can see the edit going on while making it. It saves a lot of time and gives clarity. A new director tends to take everything for safety purposes.... That is fine. It is their first film after all,” says Kaushal. He later breaks into a laugh, saying: “Why am I even talking about it? It has only been three years!”
His observations probably have to do with his fascination with the entire filmmaking process. Son of stuntman-turned-action director Sham Kaushal, his journey in the film industry, after a degree in engineering, began with assisting Kashyap on the set of Gangs of Wasseypur. “Because I started with that, I feel very excited about the idea of filmmaking,” he says. “I am very charged on a film set. I do not sit and chill in a vanity van. I am always trying to learn things from the sound team, the art team or the director of photography. Filmmaking, to me, is like a magic trick where without showing what is actually happening, you tell a story to the audience.”
Will he turn director soon? “Directing a film is a beast of a task. I have really wanted to explore myself as an actor for the longest time now. But if direction happens organically, I will not push that away. I will take it up,” says Kaushal.
A day before we meet Kaushal, the Koffee With Karan episode featuring him and Ayushmann Khurrana had aired. On the show, he confessed to being in a relationship, which is new but serious. Soon there were headlines screaming “Vicky Kaushal is in a relationship”. When mentioned, he laughs and then blushes. “That is the reason actors refrain from discussing these things,” he says. “That becomes the centre of discussion, which it should not be. But every person normally talks about their relationships and about finding love, and I am no different. Just because I am an actor, I do not have to have different rules.”
The stardom and fame, it seems, has not changed him, and he wants it to remain that way. Even if it does, he says he is surrounded with family and friends to keep him grounded.