Kabir Khan’s 83 has released on OTT a few days back and the appreciation for the film continues to pour in for it strikes such a deep emotion and a chord in our hearts, as Indians. The director has pulled off a herculean task, so beautifully – be it the research, or casting or evoking those emotions within us – Khan has made a brilliant piece of work which will be remembered for years you work.
Kabir Khan recently got into a an extensive chat with our boss lady, Malini Agarwal on Clubhouse where he deconstructed 83. The film-maker spoke at length about the process through the film and his approach as a director amidst much more.
Kabir Khan said,
“Every actor has their own process. For example, Ranveer Singh is a method actor, he loves getting into the skin of his character, he went and stayed with Kapil Dev for two weeks in his house. Ranveer surrounds himself with the photographs of the character he is playing. He even has things like a particular fragrance he uses for a character. And then there’s an Ammy Virk who just has no preparation. He comes on the ground and says sir, what are we doing today?”
Khan revealed that every actor has a different process and he doesn’t intervene much into their process. I feel, that’s so commendable especially in a film like this which has so many actors. Moreover, it’s amazing because every actor in 83 has done a fine job and fit the character like a glove.
Khan added,
“As a director, I approach them all very differently. Somebody who’s method, I know I need to spend a lot of time with this person. I took all the boys to this boot camp in Dharamshala where we lived like a cricket team. In that camp, we took a lot of readings with the actors. But with Ammy, I thought I shouldn’t do reading with him because I might just contaminate him. To each their own, as long as they are delivering on set, I don’t interfere in every actor’s process. One shouldn’t over-direct. One thing I do, is on the first day I don’t talk to the actors because we’ve already discussed so I sit as an audience and want to be surprised and not interrupt their process or creativity.”
Interestingly, it took about a year to get the whole cast in place and around 200 boys were auditioned for different roles. For such anecdotes and much more, you can now listen to this whole conversation on MissMalini’s clubhouse account.