Faridoon Shahryar (FS): We have with us, once again, one of the finest actors that we have – Abhay Deol – whose next film 'Shanghai' is releasing shortly. The theatrical trailer has been released and it has got a superb response on Bollywood Hungama. Pleasure having you back on Bollywood Hungama!
Abhay Deol (AD): Thank you!
FS: You have experimented with your look once again. Is it a risk donning this kind of a look in a film like 'Shanghai' especially after 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' which is a big hit?
AD: 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' had me as a very young, urban and the kind of guy who has a good time and has girls after him. He's handsome; he's charming blah blah blah. And then I had 'Shanghai', where my character is 10-12 years older than the character I played in 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara'. He's an IAS officer, Tamil, religious, married, egoistical…not the kind of guy you would like and definitely not the guy you would imagine who has a good time and have women running after him. I was happy I got to go so drastically different from my look in 'Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara' and background simply because it then enabled me to keep the audience guessing as to what my next film would be about and what kind of a character I would portray. So I never had any doubt in my mind. In fact, I was thankful that I got it.
FS: In hindsight, do you feel that the entire controversy of you having differences with Emraan and Dibakar was needless or was there any truth to it?
AD: The controversies happened because there was a journalist who chose to make them up. When I spoke to the paper, I said that 'the PR of the film is doing it (creating controversies)'. The journalist then called up Dibakar and said 'No no no! It was not the PR. It was me because I thought the film would get some publicity'! So unfortunately we live in times where people don't have any creativity. And it's so easy to get eyeballs because you're scandalous. It takes a little effort to be creative and to get people interested. And in this case particularly, there was this one journalist who's known to be that way and because I have never replied to his mails and been friendly to him, he chose to take it out in the papers. I've actually been told by journalists if I say anything against an actor, director or producer, they'll publish it but if I speak against a journalist, they would not print that! So it's a bit hypocritical and in fact, PVR even came up with a statement saying that it was the PR but a journalist, who's trying to make needless controversies. And the papers said that 'we agree with you and we know that this journalist makes up stuff. But we printed those articles and hence we can't put this in our papers'!
For the remaining portions from the first part of the interview visit my blog
https://faridoonshahryar.blogspot.in/
Here is the second part of the interview
https://youtube.com/watch?v=a7_hD3R8LQg
