As someone who has built a career on gentle smarts, from the relatable mentor to the soft-spoken fixer, Jitendra Kumar is glad to be in a transitory phase, all set to explore the many shades of grey in his latest crime thriller, Bhagwat.
Dearly known as Jeetu Bhaiya, Kumar became a pop culture icon with his depiction of a determined physics teacher and mentor in Kota Factory. Last seen in the satirical social comedy Panchayat, his latest venture marks a step into uncharted territory. “I had been looking for something different, and it came to fruition with Bhagwat. It was my fans who kept asking me to do a thriller and play a character I had never played,” he says.
ZEE5’s Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas, inspired by true events, follows Inspector Vishwas Bhagwat (played by Arshad Warsi), who is investigating the disappearance of young girls in the fictional town of Robertsganj. During the course of his investigation, he encounters a chemistry professor, Sameer (played by Jitendra Kumar), whose unobtrusive demeanour conceals a far more complex and layered personality.
A former engineer, who began his career with YouTube sketches, Kumar says he has always avoided being boxed in. “When I began my career, I got to play several characters, but when something becomes popular and turns into a franchise, it becomes difficult to shift focus from the same. You end up living that character over the years.”
As he steps into the grey zone, Kumar says the first thing was to accept his character and his many quirks. He jokes that Sameer’s entry among the many characters he has played “could well be announced with the riff from Sholay, which follows Amjad Khan’s Gabbar”.
The first step in his creative process was to make the character believable. “I was totally intrigued with Sameer and his many facets, so much so that I kept asking — does he really do this, did he really do that? Though it’s inspired by real-life events, for a moment I wondered if it was even possible for someone like him to exist. One should totally embrace the personality irrespective of what others may perceive the person to be. It took time to wrap my head around the moral compass of Sameer, who stands by his own convictions irrespective of what others may think,” Kumar says. When Kumar managed to get under the skin of the character, it became easier for him to play it on screen. “Convincing yourself is the biggest challenge. I worked on the nonchalant attitude of his personality,” he says.
Even as he is no stranger to hit franchises, he says that, in his early days, viewers wouldn’t even recall him or the characters he played. “People would meet me initially saying, ‘We saw you somewhere, and you did well.’ Ask them about the show or character — they wouldn’t remember. I used to wonder what it would take to make an impression. Soon after, they started equating me with my characters, and I think that’s the biggest win for me.”
He doesn’t take his success lightly, saying he’s been lucky to play characters whose emotional graph resonates with viewers.
Jitendra, who once called himself a misfit, has found widespread acceptance. “At the end, it’s the audience who decides. If an audience likes your performance, even if it doesn’t cut as per the so-called parameters, you will succeed. The audience decides who is a star and who is an actor. If they want to see more of someone, that person makes it to the poster,” he says.
As audiences now gravitate toward real and rooted stories over larger-than-life, star-driven films, Kumar views the shift as a healthy sign of evolution. “People are exposed to a lot more, and post-pandemic, they have far more options. Everything is transitory. Whenever things reach a saturation point, they move up.Filmmakers are under pressure to create something new, and that can sometimes be overwhelming as well.”
However, he doesn’t look at it as something to dread. “But that’s the exciting part of this journey, when everything feels uncertain, it means something new is about to happen,” he says.
