For Ayushmann Khurrana, 2017 has been a landmark year of honest film choices and unabashed performances

For Ayushmann Khurrana 2017 will be seen as a landmark year. Five years after his debut as Vicky in Vicky Donor, this year has been remarkable for the 33-year-old actor-composer-singer. This year saw three film releases out of which two — Bareilly Ki Barfi and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan – earned him new fans, critical accolades and box office success.

Khurrana began his career as a radio jockey in Chandigarh, shifted professions when he became a TV host and now balances his two pet passions – acting and music. Steadily moving forwards, he’s shown enormous growth as an actor this year, whether as Abhimanyu in Meri Pyari Bindu or Chirag in Bareilly Ki Barfi or Mudit in Shubh Mangal Saavdhan.

The shift and embracing of a particular character began with Dum Laga Ke Haisha in 2015 when Khurrana has made his mark playing the small town boy-next-door.

In an earlier interview to Firstpost, Akshay Roy who directed Khurrana in Meri Pyari Bindu said he believed that the actor’s appeals lies in the “innocence, honesty and likability” he projects. “His eyes are very honest. When he looks at someone and says something, you believe him,” said Roy.

Khurrana has often credited his theatre background for instilling discipline and decorum, which he has carried forward to the film set. “But being on stage is very different to being in front of the camera and my TV experience really helped me gain that perspective.”

Today, looking back on the year with these two huge hits, Khurrana says he believes that you “first need to establish your image before changing yourself.” And he’s in the process of doing just that. From the small town boy in slice of life comedies, he’s moved on to a thriller in which he plays a blind musician (in Sriram Raghavan’s next).

Speaking about his process in selecting films, he says, “From my first film, Vicky Donor, I have given unconditionally to the script. Five years ago I did a film on sperm donation. Then Dum Laga Ke Haisha was on body shaming and in ‘Shubh Mangal Saavdhan’ we tackled erectile dysfunction. I do normally wait for scripts to come to me but recently I made a conscious decision to move out of that boy-next-door zone and challenge myself. So I approached Sriram Raghavan for this film, which is tentatively titled Shoot The Piano Player. I am really challenging myself by playing a blind musician in the thriller genre.”

Khurrana’s ability to play flawed characters with confidence and emit honesty while also entertaining audiences found the perfect platform in both Bareilly Ki Barfi and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan. He admits that it’s much harder to play characters with flaws and weaknesses but also strengths, while making them realistic.

“Each of these characters was quite different from each other. The intellectual lover boy Abhimanyu was perhaps least loved but people accepted Chirag who was both villain and victim. He was a bully and selfish and it is not easy to play someone who is not likable. This character graph for both Chirag and Prem (Dum Laga Ke Haisha), who rejected his wife for her weight, were similar. You need be extremely secure as a man to play a character with erectile dysfunction, but the idea of playing Mudit was to break stereotypes about masculinity and notions of patriarchy.”

It’s not that the last five years have not seen their share of dips in the success graph. Nautanki Saala!, Bewakoofiyaan, and Hawaizaada met with tepid response. It’s taken these experiences for Khurrana to be realistic about his box office elasticity.

“I think every actor has a budget and every story has a budget. Hawaizaada, for example, had a very big production budget, which was too difficult to recoup. I make choices based on the script and the budget of the film,” he says, speaking from the set of Raghavan’s under-production thriller after which he returns to this comfort zone with the quirky comic drama Badhaai Ho. He’s also open to opportunities on stage. “I did a lot of theatre back home, and I would be really open to something good,” he says.

When not acting, Khurrana has a flourishing career as a musician, composing music, singing and touring with his band. He believes this ability to equalize these two talents is part of his audience appeal. “I think they respect the balance I am able to strike between music and acting. I always wanted to be an actor. I think of myself as an actor who sings, not as a singer who acts. I think the audience and my fans also like how I am on social media. I share things that mean something to me – whether it is Ghalib’s couplets or some anecdotes. What I share comes from me quite naturally and gives a real window into my life and thought process.”

Looking back on this year, Khurrana says he is pleased to be a part of the industry at a time when commercial success is driven by content and middle-of-the-road films are doing well.

He describes 2017 as “extremely satisfying” and adds, “I usually do one film a year and it was just chance that three released this year. But when it comes to films, each time it’s a reset. When your fans and the audience enter the cinema and the lights dim, you are starting from zero and you have to make a new and memorable connection.”