Emraan Hashmi on turning villain in Salman Khan’s Tiger 3, retiring the ‘absurd serial kisser’ tag: ‘Not like I didn’t benefit from it’

Tiger 3: The biggest film in Emraan’s career

In the Salman Khan-starrer, Emraan plays the lead antagonist — Aatish Rehman, an ex-ISI agent. Tiger 3 is also the biggest film in Emraan’s career of 20 years as an actor. He says, “It feels great. From what I hear it is Salman’s fastest Rs 200 crore in five days, which is a stupendous feat. Even for the team, it is great validation that we put so much of work into this film, it is such an ambitious project. Even before I stepped in to to play the antagonist, they’ve been writing this. The scale of this film — everything had to come together for this film, it was in the making for two-three years. When so many people go and watch your film, it is good validation. There is praise and bona fide collection which speak volumes.”

Emraan also called Tiger 3 an important film in his filmography and for the industry, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. He says, “This is definitely the biggest film as far as the scale goes, as far as star-cast goes, as far as the sheer collections that have come in and as far as production house YRF goes. In these times at least, post Covid, the industry had changed so much and it was pretty dark times for us. Seeing these kinds of collections this year is very heartening and you can say that Bollywood is inching its way back to the top of the game.”

Twenty years of Emraan Hashmi: Getting rid of the serial kisser tag

While Emraan is relishing the success of Tiger 3, he stays rooted. He remembers how he started as an actor by doing a small role in Footpath in 2003 and how he managed to get over the ‘serial kisser’ image. Revisiting his twenty-year journey, Hashmi says, “I didn’t start the journey as a traditional main lead. It was a very different genre of films that I was working with. In the beginning, it was not considered commercial, but then it started garnering the numbers at the box office. Then lies an eternal trap for all actors where if you are playing a commercial lead, you will be trapped by a certain archetype of a character or a hero. And here it was this, whatever you call it (serial kisser), it was an absurd name.”

Opening up about how the tag stuck in the first place, Hashmi shares, “It was actually given to myself as a joke but stuck with people for some reason. It stuck with the journalists and the audience and it’s not like I didn’t benefit from it. Films were doing really well at the box office.”

While the audiences were devouring the steamy sequences starring Hashmi, the actor wanted to move on before he was “badly rejected”. He says, “At one point I felt that it had played its part and I was ready to move on before it was rejected badly. You can’t serve the same dish to people time and again. You have to do something different. So, although the people didn’t want it, it was me who decided that I have to try something different. I might have had a certain bleeding period in. In the industry, people would say ‘what is he doing?’. Some films didn’t do well at the box office because I was going against the image but I thought it was very important for me to hone my skills as an actor and present something new to the audience.”

 

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Lessons he learnt from the lows

Emraan, who had a heady start in his acting career with hits such as Murder, Zeher and Aashiq Banaya Aapne made under the Bhatt camp, has been experiencing a lull in the last few years before Tiger 3 happened. When asked for what are the lessons he’s learnt from his career trajectory, he shares, “In this industry there is no constant, there will always be highs and lows. One should stay resilient and not get swayed by both — success and failure. To have your head firmly on your shoulders and go back to your love for acting, because that’s the most important. Because if you are going to make it about fame and money and the outcome of films, you are not going to last in this industry for long.

That would be true for any actor who has been around for 20-30-40 years. It is the love for acting not the fame and success and money. That is the byproduct of the work you put in,” Hashmi concludes.