Pankaj Tripathi opens up about the challenges of playing PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his biopic Main Atal Hoon
Pankaj Tripathi is starting 2024 with a bang. The actor is set to play former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in his biopic Main Atal Hoon. The film traces the political and personal journey of the late statesman, interweaving some of the biggest highlights of modern Indian history along with it. In an exclusive chat with DNA, the National Award-winner opens up on the challenges of playing PM Vajpayee and how he approached the role.
PM Vajpayee is a figure that looms large on modern Indian history, an icon that most people are familiar with. Talking about how he approached playing him on screen, Tripathi shares, “The challenging aspect was that how much of imitation should be in this, how much I should mimic, and how much should I capture his essence and ideas. I wanted to recreate his thought process and the kind of person he was. But all that has no shape. Bringing that into performance is tricky. The mannerisms are easy because that can be observed and practised. I can see that he would lift his right hand in some manner or talked in some style. But how do you emulate his thought process?”
The actor says that he did not focus much on copying the former Prime Minister’s mannerisms and distinctive style. He tells us, “Five minutes into the film, nobody will be interested in the mannerism. Woh mimicry caricature lagne lagta hai (Mimicry starts to look like caricature). Once you get a hold of the character, the audience wants to know what is happening in his mind. They want to know his mental state before he gave that speech, what he thought or planned, and not how the speech was delivered. What is important is not what he said but what he thought before saying all that.”
But Pankaj Tripathi cautions that he did not completely abandon that process too because PM Vajpayee was known for his distinctive style, something that people are very much familiar with. “It’s not as if I haven’t done it at all,” explains Tripathi, adding, “It has to be done to an extent because it is a biopic. You have to adopt certain mannerisms and suggestive gestures, posture, and speech pattern need to be there to point to the audience that this is him. But people know that this is Pankaj Tripathi trying to portray Atal Bihari Vajpayee.”
Main Atal Hoon posed another challenge to Tripathi as he had to play PM Vajpayee over the course of his life, portraying him from age 30 to 75. “Writing has a bigger contribution there than acting,” the actor explains, “We can just play age through our mannerisms, body language, and walk etc. But we can play the person’s thoughts only when the script has all that. So all that needs to be in the script beforehand.”
Directed by Ravi Jadhav, the film also stars Piyush Mishra, Raja Rameshkumar Sevak, Daya Shankar Pandey among others. It is slated to release in theatres on January 19.
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