How ‘sant aadmi’ Shahid Kapoor who doesn’t drink, eat meat was turned into a drug addict for Udta Punjab by Abhishek Chaubey

He further added that Shahid was on a strict diet as he had to look like an addict. “Moreover, he hardly used to eat anything because I needed him to look like a drug addict. If you are playing a druggie like Tommy, you don’t have any interest in food, you would keep losing weight,” he shared.

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Talking about his character Tommy Singh in an interview earlier, Shahid had said, “Tommy is obnoxious, rude, badly behaved. You will hear a lot of expletives from him, and he is everything that will turn you off. But my brief from my director (Abhishek Chaubey) was that Tommy will do everything wrong in the first five minutes, but end of the fifth minute, everyone should love him. I had no idea how to manage that (laughs). But the response that I’ve got from viewers after they watched the promo has led me to be optimistic. Basically, he’s a guy who will entertain you, but you can’t take him seriously. You enjoy watching him and his antics; he is a bit of an exhibitionist. This is the craziest character I’ve played, and the only crazier character I have seen on screen is the Joker from The Dark Knight. The only difference is that the Joker seems to have no humanity, while Tommy is really just a kid who is lost in his addiction.”

Talking about Udta Punjab, it was made on a budget of Rs 34 crore, but went on to mint about Rs 100 crore worldwide. It was one of the highest grossing films of the year 2016. The intriguing drama was based on Punjab’s drug crisis, told through the lives of a rock star, a migrant worker, a cop, and a doctor.