Purab Kohli was made to watch tortuous videos almost every day so that he could feel the pain and intensity of a captive and emote spontaneously onscreen. Ankita Jain reports on the actor’s preparations for the Homeland-style TV series POW
locked in a car in one of the byzantine lanes of Jaipur, the city enclosed by pink walls, he pleaded with director Nikkhil Advani to cast him in his next venture. “Every time I met him, the first question I would throw was ‘what are you doing next’ and ‘is there anything where I can fit in’. The eagerness never elicited a response. So when I chanced upon him in Jaipur, I did not let up. We were travelling in the same car. So I just locked it and again threw my usual questions. luckily, Prisoners of War was cooking in his head and it didn’t even take a minute for me to say yes,” gushed the Rock On famed actor Purab Kohli.
Inspired by Israeli show Hatifum, POW also stars Satyadeep Mishra, Sandhya Mridul and Amrita Puri. The story revolves around how two prisoners of war, who were falsely trapped by the army of a neighbouring nation, are released after 17 years. Moving back and forth between then and now, questioning the credibility of the jawans who may have been forced to change for the worse in those 17 years, the show features Purab as a rough and tough Army officer.
From veejaying to anchoring and essaying various complex characters, Kohli is one of the actors who likes his research. He read a lot about his character in PoW before and looked for real life references in news reports before he started shooting for it. He wanted to make sure his physical appearance was as close to being prisoner. He even managed to source material and well-documented data from a psychologist dealing with debriefings, which allowed him to have an in-depth understanding of the behavioural and physical traits of his character.
“I was made to watch torturous videos almost every day for my character to feel the pain and intensity which would help me get the same feel on screen too. For a normal person to watch such videos is very disturbing. I also consulted a psychologist to know about the mental status of a person who has been tortured for years. Such dark roles lead towards depression and my six-month-old daughter helped me come out of it. Whenever I used to be with her, I was back with vigour and the very next day the thought of my role would give me goosebumps. This went on a loop,” explained Kohli about his preparatory process.
He started his journey from a weekly TV show, Hip Hip Hurray. Asked about one thing he would want to change from his past, he said, “I wanted to be a pilot and even trained a bit before giving it up as there weren’t enough airlines back then. Then I got a chance to feature in Hip Hip Hurray through a friend who happened to be a casting director. I liked the idea of playing somebody else and communicating with an audience. That led to my becoming a VJ on Channel V. I did some guest appearances in two or three shows but I never really got into regular TV. I did travel shows for eight years. And then slowly that exposure got me into films. I love the path my career has taken. But if I go back and change one thing in my career, it would have to be changing my timeline for becoming an actor. I should have pursued acting earlier. In the early eight years of my career, working on television, I wasn’t serious about it. I was doing it as something that was getting me money. That realisation came when I did My Brother Nikhil. I had fun on the set and got a lot of appreciation for my role; I enjoyed that and wanted to make a career out of it. That happened very late, I was already seven years down the line in TV. Then I consciously started trying hard in the film industry and I always came with that image that had already been set on the television. People who wanted to cast me featured me in the image of an urban cool guy on TV. And you can’t play that character in every film.”
Kohli, who is currently working on two different projects — Rock On 2 and PoW, had to constantly juggle with his weight for both. “My character for the film is completely different from the one in the TV series. One factor which was totally opposite was the weight I had to get down drastically for PoW,” said the actor who not only worked on his body and mind but also took a step ahead and learnt a new language altogether. He learnt Punjabi and also started respecting the turban he used to wear during the shoot out of a sense of respect and pride. An actor who is constantly in workshop mode.