From Dev Malik in Des Mein Nikla Hoga Chand to Ambar Sharma in Mere Dad Ki Dulhan, it is always a pleasure for the viewers to see VARUN BADOLA on screen. MUSBA HASHMI chats up the actor for his teleplay Wrong Turn
What is your role in Zee Theatre’s teleplay Wrong Turn?
I play a man who is caught in a wrong situation. He gets stuck in a snowstorm and decides to take refuge in a bungalow where four friends, who are retired lawyers, play a mock trial with everyone who visits that bungalow. They tell my character that you won’t be able to move out from this place till morning because of the snowstorm, so why don’t you join us in the game. They do a mock trial and find my character guilty of the murder and try to prosecute me. This is what the whole story is and how the story pans out is interesting to watch. It is actually the adaptation of a German play, Breakdown.
How interesting was to be a part of such a story?
It was fun. The interest quotient lies in the way the story progresses. The process of making that character and evolving it over time was also thrilling. We rehearsed for it for 20 odd days. That was extremely fun because it was something we don’t get to do in TV or films. That part was interesting.
What made you take up a teleplay?
The reason was that I wanted to explore this genre as well. It’s been a long time since I have been on stage and have performed in continuity. It is different feel to shoot something in one go. That was something that attracted me towards this teleplay. And Thank God that I said to it because it was a fantastic experience.
You don several hats, that of a writer, director and an actor. Where do you find yourself most comfortable in?
There is no comfort zone as such. Every field demands a different amount of dedication. When you are acting, you have to justify your character. Only if you will justify the character, you will justify the story. As a writer, you have to create all the characters, so that the actors can justify them on screen. And as a director you have too see everything.
Is there a conflict between the writer, director and actor in you?
There is no internal conflict between a writer and an actor in me. Because ultimately there is one brain which is driving both of them. So while donning these two hats, one has to be completely bipolar to negate yourself. But yes, the writer in me does help the actor in a lot of ways. At times, while doing TV, one tend to gets stuck. The idea here is not to get technical but find solutions to the problems. Here the writer does help you get out of tricky situations a lot of times.
As for the writer-director, it goes on a different tangent. When you are directing something that you have written, there is always a scope for improvisations.
How do you define acting?
It is a simple thing. Read what is written, understand it and just do it on camera. That is all. Then comes the interest quotient of course. It is like you have to write ABC only, but it is up to you how fancy you want it to be. It is your choice to play with the fonts and styles. You can keep on beautifying it. The best thing about acting is that there can be hundreds of interpretations of a single situation. One can cry in a lot of ways and laugh in a lot of different ways and each way will portray a different meaning.
In all these years of your career, is there a change that you have seen in the TV industry?
Yes. There were times when TV got better, than it saw a downfall and vice versa. It has seen both ups and downs. Many things have been improved now. But if I talk about the time, when I used to watch TV and DD was the only channel, I feel probably we had better stories to tell back then. Then came a time when everything became content-driven and we shifted to commercialisation. A lot of things got ruined during this shift. Now, we are going towards resurrection, though at a small level.
nDo we need entertainment for seven days a week? Why not take inspiration from international series and make them time bound?
Like I mentioned before, when we will shift from being content-driven to commercially-driven we will see this happening. The reason is the priority now is not to show good content, but to not let go the huge chunk of audience that you have received, even at the cost of compromising on the quality. This mindset needed a change yesterday or even day before yesterday, but we don’t let it happen.