A few days ago, I had shared everything about my rendezvous with the superstar Amitabh Bachchan. The legend happily chatted away about his love for social media when I asked him about his experience of being on the digital platform. He even took me on a walk down memory lane by sharing interesting anecdotes of his good old days. And since you guys enjoyed listening to the podcast, I decided to share the recording of the entire interview. Here it goes! (PS: It felt like I was dreaming when he entered the conference room and asked us whether we had had tea or not.)
Here are some of the things that he spoke about at length during the interview.
On Shamitabh…
Unique. It’s a very different kind of a plot. It has not been shown in Hindi cinema before. R. Balki makes films which are very different from the expected stories that you see in Hindi cinema. And it’s quite unique and challenging for actors like me. Shamitabh is a story of two people. One person having something which the other person doesn’t (Dhanush). Then comes the role of Akshara (Haasan), who is a journalist. She is the one who will evaluate the two and get them to come together. The story is around these two people and their egos. He (his Shamitabh character) is frustrated in his life and sometime he takes the help of alcohol. There were many roles in the past where I had played such scenes but in every film the situations and the characters are different. Thus changes the way you perform on screen. But, I strictly believe that drinking alcohol is not good for an actor. There are some actors who drink before doing such a scene but I don’t believe in that and will never do that.
On working with Dhanush…
I will not stop showering praises at him if you ask me about him. He’s a wonderful artist, very unassuming, very dedicated, very professional. There are great subtle things in what he does. He makes simple things look so wonderful when he performs. He’s a very accomplished artist.
On His Experience Of Being A Digital Media Icon…
People say that an artist should never expose himself. I feel that’s a lot of rubbish in today’s times because the moment I walk out of here, fifty mobile phones will take my photographs. There’s a separate section in various tabloids and websites on our airport outings. Once those photos are out, where is question of being out of reach? Everything is known about me today. Social media has played a pivotal role in bringing us all together and I think it’s a boon. We don’t see, we don’t hear, we don’t meet the people who go to see our films and show their love and affection. We get to see their love and affection because they repeatedly go and see our films. The commercial return tell us that this film had been appreciated by the people. But we don’t get to meet them or hear them. Social media has made it possible and that’s wonderful I feel. When they get an opportunity to talk to, see and meet the people they’ve admired, that brings us closer together. I am very honored to be on the social media and have the opportunity to talk to people and know what they actually say.
We hope you enjoy the audio recording of this interview, to give you a glimpse into what it’s like doing group interviews with a bunch of journalists! Make sure to tell us what your favourite part was 🙂