Jaideep Ahlawat says he was angry about An Action Hero’s failure at the box office: ‘I felt ye galat hai’

The actor then shared that he was quite upset that the film did not do well in theatres. He said, “And then when the film came on OTT everybody watched and loved it. I felt a little angry also. People (after watching it on OTT) wrote how they wished they had watched the film in theatres. Everybody who watched it in theatres or on OTT loved the film, I haven’t come across anyone who said yeh kya bakwaas film hai (what nonsense this is). It feels weird, I was like yeh samajh nahi aayaa aise kyon hua (I don’t know what went wrong). It was a Bollywood masala film with so many things in it. There were so many factors in it, so many little social issues were addressed in the film. We told the story in a good way, but it showed yeh sab aapke aas paas ho raha hai (this is all happening in your immediate surrounding).”

Jaideep then spoke about the upcoming project that’s keeping him excited. The Audible series, where he plays the sharp and cool superhero Hawkeye and shares the project with the likes of Kareena Kapoor Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Sharad Kelkar, Prajakta Koli, Masaba Gupta and others.

 

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When asked to share the kind of prep he’s gone through for his first podcast, he said, “It feels like a normal film shoot. It is just that you don’t need any physical preparation for it, you can go for it at any weight or look, it doesn’t matter. None of us have to worry about our costumes or anything, otherwise the process is more or less the same, you read the script, understand it, try to figure out what motivations are needed, because it’ll help you in the dubbing studio, in the sound studio so that you make the world that you’re creating only through your voice and sound, more believable.”

How much of Marvel films has the actor consumed and what all references he’s picked to play it here, he says he hardly watched Marvel films, especially with Hawkeye in it. He said, “I’ve had no reference because I’ve never seen it. Especially Hawkeye, I haven’t seen it. Bohot kam Marvel world dekha hai maine (I’ve watched very little from the Marvel universe). But that’s good for me, because there have been projects, for example say, if some scripts are based on a book, I purposely don’t read it because, as an actor, it can block your imagination as you can get influenced by it. It is good that I haven’t seen Hawkeye, there are different places where you can pick references from the script.”

 

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Jaideep has been a feature film actor for over two decades now, when asked if he’ll crave an audience or the camera while performing, he said that because of his initial theatre days, he’s learnt to adapt with different mediums.

“No, because I started with theatre as an actor, not a professional actor but as an actor I started working on the stage first which has no camera, but an audience. And as in every profession, I think even actors shift. There used to be a live audience first, then the camera came and we started filming, there are times on set when there’s no space even for a co-actor, so you imagine them in front of you, or imagine an audience. So as an actor I keep myself open to adopt and do new work, and shift my process and angle of focus,” the actor concluded.

The Wastelanders on Audible will drop on the online audiobook and podcast service soon this year.