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Way before the script of Drishyam 2‘s Hindi adaptation was complete; director Abhishek Pathak knew that he somehow, anyhow, wanted to get actor Akshaye Khanna on-board. The director said, when he saw the original Malayalam sequel featuring Mohanlal, he sensed there was a space to expand the character of the investigator and give it a crazy twist. The team unanimously thought of Akshaye Khanna to give it that spin.
“There is a cop character in the original, who is investigating the entire case, but I wanted to make an edgier film. The world of Drishyam is simply outstanding. The guy, who is leading the investigation, we thought to make him a crazy character. As we started writing, that character kept getting very interesting. We had thought of Akshaye sir while writing,” Pathak told indianexpress.com.
When the director did pitch the film to Akshaye Khanna, he said the actor was slightly reluctant as Drishyam franchise already had a set star cast with Ajay Devgn, Tabu and Shriya Saran among others. If Khanna was entering its world with a new character, he wanted it to be worth it.
“Initially when I had met Akshaye sir, he was very unsure. He asked, ‘Why me? It is Ajay sir’s film. If you bring me into the film, something different has to be there otherwise I don’t know.’ I told him you read the script, don’t tell me what you think of it immediately. I was at his farmhouse in Alibaug. He read the screenplay and by the time I reached home, he said, ‘I am doing the film!'”
Drishyam 2, which released on November 18 to a bumper response at the box office, features Devgn as Vijay Salgoankar while Tabu return as Meera Deshmukh. The film follows the struggle of Vijay and his family, who are still under a cloud of suspicion after the death of the son of the Inspector General of Police gets killed.
Pathak said before he fleshed out the character of Khanna, he thought of a scene which involved the family dealing with this “crazy” investigator.
“I wrote the scene and thought, who could do magic to this character. I thought only Akshaye could, because he is a crazy actor and has some weird way of performing certain scenes and will do mad scenes. I had told him I would come to him with something and started writing the screenplay.
“A lot of people write and then think of casting, but we started writing for him. The draft had every trait we know about him as an actor and we put that on paper. His name throughout the draft was just called Akshaye Khanna! We changed it to Tarun Ahlawat much later,” he added.
Drishyam 2, also starring Ishita Dutta, Mrunal Jadhav and Rajat Kapoor, has emerged as a big success at the box office, ending the dry spell that Bollywood was going through since the big-ticket September release Brahmastra.
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