Sanjay Dutt: ‘KGF 2 is my first film in the south and I wonder why I was never approached before’

Sanjay Dutt , in his over four-decade career has played a wide range of characters but what he has enjoyed the most is playing larger-than-life grey and morally obscure characters in films like Khalnayak, Vaastav, Kaante and Agneepath to name a few. He calls his 1993 release Khalnayak in which he played a terrorist, as the turning point in his career as the film helped him step out of his comfort zone giving him an opportunity to experiment with his choices. Probably that is one of the reasons the actor is excited playing an antagonist in upcoming Kannada film K.G.F: Chapter 2 , the much-awaited follow up to 2018 hit K.G.F: Chapter 1. The film in which Dutt will be seen as a complicated and ruthless Adheera, marks the Kannada debut of the Bollywood star. Dutt is set to lock horns with the Kannada superstar Yash; the second instalment is based on a turf dispute between Yash’s Rocky and Adheera. While certain reports suggested that Dutt was keen on doing the first part as well but he couldn’t as his schedule was tight, the actor clarifies that his character was teased towards the end of the first movie and it fits well into the second part. “The makers had my character in the form of a silhouette in the first part, they didn’t want to expose who he is. I think my character goes well with the second one,” says Dutt in an exclusive conversation with Firstpost. Adheera, his character, Dutt reveals, is inspired by the Vikings. “It is one of the craziest characters I have ever played. It always happens…I feel I have done everything; I have played all characters but then suddenly something comes up which is new. Adheera suddenly came up…There was a lot of physical preparation required, about one-and-a-half hours to do the make-up to get the look, and a lot of prep mentally to get into the skin of the character. I know I am known to be an impatient man and it required a lot of patience to get into the character and look but I have stopped becoming impatient now (laughs). As time passes patience sets in. It was taxing but you have to do it for your character to be remembered and look good on the screen,” says Dutt. “I was attracted to the passion of the makers and definitely the character and the script. This is one of my favourites in terms of edginess and rawness. Adheera is menacing but he is focused, he knows that he has to take his kingdom back what _‘Rocky’ t_ook away and that is his agenda in life,” says Dutt, who is all praise of film’s director Prashant Neel. “Prashant is the most amazing director that I have worked with and that India can have. He is a task master but in a very sweet way. He has a lot of clarity and that makes life easy for an actor. We wanted Adheera to look very different, so we went through this process of trying to create looks until we were satisfied. Everybody on the set was so dedicated to that film, everybody felt it was their film and there is too much of passion involved right from the spot boy to the light guy to the camera department, to the ADs,” Dutt furthers as he wonders why he was never offered films from South in the past. “KGF is the first film I am doing in the South and I wonder why I was never approached before. But what I am happy about is now there is no division and segmentation between film industries. I never approved of this in the first place. I have always said we are an Indian film industry and it has taken us really very long to come together. It was divided earlier but now looks like there is no division of South, Bollywood, Tollywood…We are now coming together, we are merging…it is the most beautiful thing to happen. We now represent the Indian film industry,” he says. This brings us to the most discussed and debated topic in current times – the Pan-India craze and the South film industry attracting more footfalls to the theatres than Bollywood movies. “South film industry never forgot heroism in movies, they have kept it intact which we Hindi makers have forgotten and I wonder why. I know we have to make content driven films, we also want slice-of-life comedies and family dramas because it is a part of the journey but why are you forgetting the real hero, the real heroism, those one liners, dramatic entry of a hero…we have to get back to that. All of us – Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, me, Ajay Devgn, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Sunny Deol…we grew up watching that, we did those kinds of films and we shouldn’t let it go. That is why I have started my own production company and I will make such films happen,” says the actor-producer who would love to direct someday. “Yes, I plan to direct but maybe after two to three years, not now. I would love to make big action films with heroism which are missing these days. As of now I am busy in the completion of a couple of comedies (as an actor) but we have to get that action hero back and that is my agenda,” says Dutt. The senior actor also plans to give serious thought to the subjects he is giving a nod to. “Yes, there is a change in my choice and selecting scripts. Earlier I used to hardly listen to stories and say ‘Yes’ but now I am going to pay more attention and start listening to them properly and only then decide what has to be taken forward,” he says. Coming back to action films that he plans to produce, it won’t be surprising if Dutt casts himself in the lead as the 62-year-old actor with a never-say-die attitude says he is confident of doing any kind of action, “Age is just a number,” saying so he opens up on the “difficult climax” he shot for KGF 2 right after his cancer treatment. It may be recalled that Dutt was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2020. He had announced that he was well and he resumed shooting for the film right after that. “I have done action in KGF.  I was diagnosed with cancer and they wanted me to take it easy but I said no way. I did it in the same way the director had planned. They supported me. They suggested we shoot it against a green screen. But as an actor, shooting this film correctly was important to me. We had a grand vision for it. The climax had to be mounted on a large scale. It was a difficult climax — there was mud, dust, fire and a lot of action. But I couldn’t have done that shoot without their help. Also, I just don’t give up,” says Dutt, obviously hinting at his troubled and turbulent life that could be best described as stranger than fiction. This brings us to Dutt’s autobiography. He had plans of coming out with his autobiography a year after the release of his biopic Sanju (2018), on his birthday, in 2019. “I was planning and I would love to do it but I need time to sit, talk and spend time with the writer. I don’t have that kind of time now but once I think and decide upon it I will definitely come out with my autobiography,” he says. Dutt, who has shared screen space with many of his contemporaries, has often been described as a very secure actor by his co-stars and rivals. However, Dutt, who applauds the young actors today for their talent and confidence, wants to give one piece of advice to them: “That they should be open to work with other actors. Forget multi starrers, they are not doing even two hero films. They shouldn’t have that insecurity in them because people like me or my contemporaries we worked with everybody. That was the learning process for me. When I worked with Amitabh Bachchan or Dilip Kumar or with Dharmendra and Jeetendra, or even with my arch rivals, I learnt. I was not scared. I used to sit and watch them,” he says. When you tell Dutt that Akshay Kumar, too, wonders why two big heroes don’t come together and pat comes Dutt’s response: “Maybe Akshay and I should get together and do one good action film,” he says with a loud laugh. “I have been in the industry for 45 years, what fear can I have? What is there to feel insecure? The only thing that I bear in mind is, ‘Yes, I have to move on with the times and I should play parts according to my age which I do. After a while, if you don’t do things as per your age, you don’t get accepted by the audience. So, it is important to move on. And I want everybody to do well. I am lucky that I still get so much love from people as well as the industry. I am blessed," he says when asked about the fear of losing stardom. Lastly, when asked about the best phase of his life and career, the actor who has sailed through the hardships with his positivity, signs off saying, “Every phase is good, whether good times or bad times…it was a lesson…I have learnt even from the bad phase and I have moved on. There is nothing that I want to change.” Produced by Vijay Kiragandur of Hombale Films, K.G.F: Chapter 2 also stars Srinidhi Shetty, Prakash Raj, and Raveena Tandon among others. The movie will hit the screens on 14 April in Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, and Hindi. Seema Sinha is a Mumbai-based mainstream entertainment journalist who has been covering Bollywood and television industry for over two decades. Her forte is candid tell-all interviews, news reporting and newsbreaks, investigative journalism and more. She believes in dismissing what is gossipy, casual, frivolous and fluff. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. 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