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| Edited By: Deepali Singh |Source: DNA |Updated: Dec 10, 2018, 06:20 AM IST
It’s cold!” are the first words Vir Das utters when he comes on the line to speak to us. The stand-up comedian, actor and musician, is stationed in Prague to shoot for the American TV show Whiskey Cavalier and it’s minus five degrees there. It might be freezing cold, but Vir is enjoying being the new guy on the sets. He tells us. “I’ve never done a mainstream network American show. It’s an action comedy about four people who are part of a team that saves the world every week. We get to wear suits and fire guns,” he says.
For someone whose phone had stopped ringing after the debacle called Mastizaade in 2016, Vir seems to be juggling a lot of balls in the air. Apart from the TV show, he’s writing and acting in a Hindi web series, and has three films including the sequel of Go Goa Gone. Moreover, his second Netflix special, Losing It, is all set to release tomorrow. “I’m always happiest when I’m over-busy,” he exclaims. “I have worked very hard to be this exhausted in life,” he adds.
The show’s about losing who you were as an individual and questioning all of your beliefs in life. It’s about waking up and realising that you don’t believe 90 per cent of the sh*t you used to believe — so re-questioning your perspective, religion, your politics, relationships, friendships, career, masculinity, feminism — all of it. I think it’s a point in life a lot of people can relate to, specially when they enter their 30s. It’s also a show where I, in a certain sense, lost my nationality as well because I took a year off to travel across the globe. I went to 33 different countries to write this show and it’s also about that — your Indian identity in the world today.
I think so. In the first one, I was trying to introduce myself to people and I had to talk about what they wanted to talk about. Now, it’s like a second date and I will say things I want to talk about. So, there are stories about me going bankrupt, falling sick, about being a dishonest child, being a compulsive liar etc.
No, I think a stand-up comedian is required to be a storyteller. There’s no point going there and making social statements you cannot weave within the quilt of a story, otherwise you’re just making a speech and not doing comedy.
(Cuts in) Yes, but I should clarify that I have only written the story with Nikkhil Advani. There’s a writer’s room of eight talented writers who have done the screenplay and dialogue. I took the idea of the show to Nikkhil two years ago and he’s directing it. I play Hasmukh, the title character. He’s a serial killer and it’s a nice range for me to go that way — the opposite of who I am.
With movies or acting, initially, you’re just trying to get your foot in the door, so you just do what is given to you. I don’t think you get to start experimenting till you have a fan base that is so sizeable that people can’t ignore it. There is an artistic intention to do these things, but it needs business viability.
It’s been about three or four months since I made any music. The plan is to make another Alien Chutney album by the middle of next year.
It’s natural to have them all together and the audiences overlap as well. We’ve always been overkeen to compartmentalise. What we are realising is that audiences are looking for variety from the same artiste. The same guy who is going to watch a Rohit Shetty film, will watch a Neerja and the same guy will watch a good series online. So, it’s possible to do different things and entertain viewers through the year.
