‘Audiences don’t want actors to play themselves anymore’: Rajkummar Rao

I ’m just an actor who is blessed.” This was Rajkummar Rao’s simple reply when asked whether he feels like an insider or an outsider in Bollywood, a decade after making his debut. The actor’s upcoming films include Chhalaang and Ludo that are set for release. “The characters in both films are different from each other — they talk differently, they look different.I find it exciting because the audiences can see an actor do something one day and then do something entirely different the next,” he said about his two big releases, in a Time Pass conversation, a series of webinars arranged by The New Indian Express, and hosted by senior journalist Kaveree Bamzai. Rajkummar’s excitement is also fuelled by how he has got to work with those he admires a lot.While Chhalaang, a sports comedy-drama, is directed by Hansal Mehta and produced by Luv Ranjan, Ludo, a crime comedy, is directed by Anurag Basu, someone who Rajkummar fondly calls ‘dada’.On Ludo, he said he has “played out of the crease” and that he went “full-on”. Rajkummar, who appears in a new look in the film, said Basu was very receptive to his ideas. “We were doing a look test and trying different hair patches, and all of a sudden, dada said I looked a lot like Mithunda (Mithun Chakraborty).