Actor Shahid Kapoor, happy and content to receive a positive response for his performance in Padmaavat, says that with each film, he has had to wait much longer than many of his contemporaries to achieve milestones in his career. But he chose to maximise his space with a skilled performance.
In the film, Shahid essays Maharawal Ratan Singh, said to be a comparatively lesser known historical character than Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khilji or Rani Padmavati for common people. It was quite ironical then that the real and reel met the same situation to navigate their way for finding a space. “I think I always had to work much harder to get a good opportunity and had to wait longer than many to get a milestone in my career. But I view it like this — God has given me the opportunity to learn, has given me a destiny of a student. I have never given the same exam in life, but different. That is how I learnt different things in life and that has added to my experience,” Shahid said.
He believes Padmaavat threw up a “tricky opportunity” which could have “gone horribly wrong.” He credits much of it to director Sanjay leela Bhansali. “I think Sanjay sir has a tendency to keep pushing and trying until he gets exactly what he wants from a performer. His passion to achieve excellence is much focussed and therefore, he looks like a taskmaster. It is nothing negative, I would rather say that people who do not have that desire to achieve excellence should not work with him. As a director, he is not difficult. He is just a genius and focussed.”
Shahid was confident about the film and not worried about its box office. However, he was concerned with a deeper aspect of his decision to take up the project. “I questioned myself — can I take the ownership of this filmIJ Can I stand tall and say that I took a right decision by doing this filmIJ Will I be able to perform my best before a filmmaker like BhansaliIJ Will I make the presence of my character felt in the film between two author-backed charactersIJ” That’s when Shahid went back to classics to find inspiration for his performance. He sought reference points from veterans like Dilip Kumar of Mughal-e-Azam and Amitabh Bachchan from Sholay.