Grey Matter

SOME years ago when Gulshan Devaiah was walking towards his Andheri pad after a particularly bad day,he got a call from Kalki Koechlin. She was having dinner with Anurag Kashyap in the vicinity and wanted him to join them. Devaiah headed there. However,there was more in store for him. Kashyap and Koechlin narrated some scenes […]

SOME years ago when Gulshan Devaiah was walking towards his Andheri pad after a particularly bad day,he got a call from Kalki Koechlin. She was having dinner with Anurag Kashyap in the vicinity and wanted him to join them. Devaiah headed there. However,there was more in store for him. Kashyap and Koechlin narrated some scenes from That Girl in Yellow Boots to him and asked him to play the role of Chittiappa.

The character of this ruthless gangster was not fully fleshed out at that time. Drawing from his experience of devised theatre where the cast improvises together and develops a script,Devaiah started working on it. We did not want Chittiappa to be a typical gangster. Apart from theatre,what helped me was the experience of living on the outskirts of Bangalore. People I had encountered there as well as the hoodlums in my college came handy in giving shape to the character, he says.

With this,Devaiah got his first break on the big screen that kind of justified this National Institute of Fashion Technology,Bangalore,graduates decision to give up a fairly successful career in fashion at the age of 30 and shift to Mumbai. Five years since,he has acted in seven films and is awaiting the release of the most commercial of them all Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Ram-Leela,where he is cast as Deepika Padukones cousin Bhavani. Most of his characters,including the one in this movie,where his villainy is unveiled gradually,are marked by dark shades. Yet with each of these roles be it KC of Shaitan or Siddharth Dhanrajgir of Hate Story I have attempted to do something out of the box. I dont have a straightforward approach; I like to deviate a bit, says Devaiah,who has done English theatre in Bangalore and Mumbai. He featured in acclaimed plays such as Butter and Mashed Banana,Hamlet: The Clown Prince and Project STRIP.

After moving to Mumbai,the 35-year-old started working with various theatre groups. He took up roles in indie and offbeat films too,before landing on the grand sets of Ram-Leela. Film was on my mind five years ago when I moved to Mumbai. However,I did not know how to go about it. I did not know my space. Luckily,a new kind of cinema came about, he says.

When he was offered Ram-Leela,he was initially intimidated by Bhansali. Prodded by his wife Kalliroi Tziafeta,a Mumbai-based theatre actor,he accepted the role. You have to first understand the directors craft. Then you know how to apply yourself. I got two days on the sets of Ram-Leela before I faced the camera. I observed Bhansali and tried to understand his ways, recalls Devaiah.

Shooting for Ram-Leela overlapped with that of Hunter for some days. Apart from allowing him barely four hours to sleep,this demanded

that Devaiah move between two very different settings. Hunter is a rom-com and more realistic in nature compared to the grandeur of Bhansali which gives the impression of a classic painting, he recalls.

Story continues below this ad

After Ram-Leela,he will be moving to a very different space when

he starts shooting for two films produced by Pooja Bhatt Kaustav Neogi-directed Cabaret and another untitled project.

Click here to join Express Pune WhatsApp channel and get a curated list of our stories