Rajkumar Hirani: Sanjay Dutt had no qualms about trusting me with his life story

Rajkumar Hirani’s biopic on Sanjay Dutt, Sanju, opens today. And, the filmmaker, who is known as one of the brightest talents in Hindi cinema, says he has butterflies in his stomach, but shows no visible signs of his nervousness. He laughs when I ask him if he is aware that the film is tracking extraordinarily well. “Who conducts these surveys? Where do these tracking figures come from?” Raju (as he’s popularly known) questions, smiling beatifically. Then, he goes on to explain meticulously how Ranbir Kapoor tackled the challenge of playing the Munna Bhai actor.

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Have you realised that we’ve never seen a biopic of an actor in his lifetime. In that sense, you are about to make history.

Yes, actually, there is no such biopic. Whenever I tried asking an actor, everyone backed off. Many of them wondered, ‘Why would we share our story?’ Sanjay is different. He had no qualms about trusting me with his life story. You know, he hadn’t even seen the film till two days ago. I was like, how can this guy be so cool? But that is Sanjay for you. I remember calling him earlier and asking him to watch it and he said, ‘Abhi baahar hoon, aa ke dekhta hoon.’ Another actor would have been curious. They would be dying to know, ‘Kya ho raha hai, kya bana raha hai?’ But Sanjay is a superstar, he is too cool.

There are amazing reactions to Ranbir’s portrayal of Sanjay from people who caught the film at previews.

I doff my hat to Ranbir. He never forces his thoughts on you. If he wanted to convince me about something, he would do it so tactfully. I remember when we decided to work together, the first thing he told me was, ‘Sir, thoda time rakhna. Let’s start work on the looks, do-teen mahine lagenge.’ He said it so softly, but I knew he couldn’t be rushed. I know in those months he had already started preparing. But he was not willing to make a go of it, till he was fully convinced. Ranbir has said that it was a daunting task. I agree. 

My team and I supported his (Ranbir’s) thought process. He had the patience to keep trying out the various looks. Sometimes, after five to six hours of make-up, he would say it wasn’t working. He took just 30 seconds to shake his head and say ‘No’. Then we’d sit for hours to discuss how we could make it work. Later, we went to London to get it done. The most important thing was the patience on his part.

The look was just one aspect, the other aspect was how he would play Sanju. Thoda zyada karta, then it would look like mimicry or caricaturish. You never know the depth of an actor. Humko laga ki yeh kar raha hai, aise hi karna hai. I noticed it when we shot a song at the end of the film where he was himself. It felt as if I was shooting with another actor because, for the rest of the film, he had toned himself down so much. Usually, Ranbir is an expressive guy who uses his hands and face to capture what he is saying. But once he had transformed into Sanjay’s character, he had fully borrowed his mannerisms.

You have worked with Sanju on the Munna Bhai franchise and with Ranbir now. Is there any similarity between them when it comes to approaching their roles?

Not at all. Sanjay has a fabulous memory. If you give him two pages of dialogue to memorise, he will do it in a real way. Arshad Warsi, who was also in the Munna Bhai franchise, and I noticed that Sanju was not saying the lines given on the page. He would mix his own lines with what we had written; woh apna banaake bolta tha. I panicked because he wasn’t saying what was originally written. I asked Sanju to stick to his lines. And when he said them the way they were, his performance dropped. Then I realised that his strength is to take the gist of the dialogue, and say it in the way it’s spoken. When we speak, we fumble and repeat words as we are thinking and he made it natural by doing all of that. So I let him do what he was doing. I have to be a hawk to ensure that whatever I’m trying to say is not missed and there is something in taking it beyond.

Aamir (Khan) loves to rehearse. I like it when actors do that. It makes work easy. Aamir is very expressive. Look at  Secret Superstar, he has a great understanding of the script, overall understanding of the medium and he brings in a lot of that to his performance. Ranbir also rehearses a lot. I realised he makes his performances real. He doesn’t overexpress. I understand kiski kya strength hai. I try and get what I want using the strengths that the 
actors have.