After delivering a series of successful Bollywood films, Ayushmann Khurrana now plays a call centre worker in Dream Girl, which also stars Nushrat Bharucha in the lead role. Ahead of the film’s release, Ayushmann gets candid about his film, career and more. IBNS-TWF brings excerpts:
You are now a national award winning actor. How do you look back to your journey?
It has been a very fruitful journey of course. I had started with radio (as a radio jockey) and then shifted to television and now films. The national award is in the bucket list of every actor during his career. But the funny part is one gets the national award when he least expects it. I had expected the award after doing my first film Vicky Donor but Annu Kapoor had got then (smiles). I have been fortunate to work with some great directors.
You have been very versatile in choosing scripts and roles.
Sometimes the scripts come to me and sometimes I reach out to them. I think a convergence of the two happens. I couldn’t resist but doing Dream Girl after listening to the script. I thought this film was enough commercial for me and then I tread in a different territory. So I was really excited.
How easy was it to wear sarees and women’s dresses?
It takes a toll to wear women attires honestly. Women are for sure better gender than men. I agree to it. Two to three women were used to get me ready for the shoot. Wearing saree is not at all an easy job.
How difficult was it to modulate voices to sound like a woman in the film?
I have utilised my experience of working as a radio jockey a lot in the film. I have been in front of microphone earlier. Normally, I sounded a bit hoarse like a man during the shooting but I slipped into the character completely when I went there behind the microphone for dubbing.
Have you played any prank on your friends by sounding like women during school days?
Not during college days. But I modulated my voice a lot during school days to escape from girls’ parents. When I was in the 10th standard, I used to sound like a woman when the fathers of my girl friends used to pick up the call (smiles).
Is it also frightening to play the-boy-next-door characters? Do you get frightened anticipating any failure?
I think confidence comes from it. One gets braver with his choices when success comes. An actor becomes more confident when he gets validated for his choices of his films. In Andhadhun and Article 15, my characters were not like common people. But yes, I have played a common man’s role in Dream Girl. I want to do films on several Indian aspects which have not been discussed much.