The bad boy act in Pink got Vijay Varma into the limelight. “I’ve been busy since Pink. Yeah, women like bad boys. But this one that I play is really messed-up bad. So far, the reaction I’ve got has mostly been, ‘You’re so good at being this bad. Don’t come near me. But you’re good!’ I got some very strong reactions from women after the screening. I don’t know if any woman would want to date me or not after this role, haha. Jokes aside, I think in these modern times, people really can segregate the actor from the character.”
Varma admits that when he was offered the part, he didn’t expect such an impact. “When I read the script, I knew my character Ankit had some seriously strong scenes. My only worry was to get it right while shooting and also to discover more behind the text. So yes, it was written with the intention to create terror and menace, and I plunged into it wholeheartedly.”
Vijay admits he was apprehensive about playing such a sinister scumbag. “But I was equally lured and equally challenged to do it. I took a day to mull over it and decided to take it up because I loved the script. And I deeply admire Shoojitda (producer Shoojit Sircar) and Tonyda (director Aniruddh Roychoudhury). So I had faith that it wouldn’t be like the 1980s and 90s villains that titillate the male audience.”
Coming from a conservative family, Varma had to seek reference points for his character’s predatory and crass behavior towards women. “I saw a lot of Roadies Delhi auditions and Splitsvilla to get the passive aggressiveness from people on these shows. Their behavior and mindsets, I tried to ape. I am from Hyderabad and have lived in a very protected family, almost like a girl child. But male dominance and chauvinism were very readily available everywhere around us.”
Taapsee’s molestation sequence in a speeding car took Herculean amounts of disciplined acting by Vijay to be successfully achieved. “Actually, Taapsee and I never rehearsed that scene together before the shoot. She was preparing on her own, and I was on my own. We, however, had met and done a few cast readings of the film. When the shooting date came, it was my birthday, 29th March. It was a running joke on the set: ‘Birthday ke din aisa kaam kar raha hai, toh saal bhar kya karega.’”
When it was time to shoot the scene, Vijay proved up to it. “We were both well-prepared mentally and got into that car with three cameras mounted. We did that scene in precisely two takes. When Tonyda saw the monitor to check if it was good, he couldn’t bear to see the whole thing and stopped midway, saying, ‘We got it. We got it.’ That’s it. It was done very effortlessly. Both she and I were totally honest to the scene and did our job as actors. She’s a fab co-actor.”
Vijay Varma sees India as a nation of abusers. “We are a nation that loves making heroes of people who abuse, offend, and show aggression. We are fed that all the time—Bigg Boss, Roadies, Splitsvilla. Still, I haven’t seen anyone like my character Ankit in Pink in real life. He was a total badass.”
