Sikandar Kher reveals he suggested using poker chips in Monica O My Darling scene, on his winsome act: ‘It was supposed to be a deck of cards…’

Sikandar is quick to brush off the compliments and give credit to his ‘captain’ Vasan Bala and their colleagues on and off the camera. Speaking about how he got on board the project, the actor said he was filming a movie with Dev Patel (Patel’s directorial Monkey Man), and it was during the pandemic’s third phase that the script was pitched to him.

Sikandar told indianexpress.com, “I was doing a hectic action sequence that had been going on for days in Indonesia, and that’s when I got a call from the casting agency. Upon hearing it, that Vasan Bala was directing the film, my antenna just stood up. He is the kind of filmmaker I have always wanted to work with, he makes the kind of stuff that I like to watch. I thought that was cool. Within an hour I was done reading the script on my mobile while on a five-hour transit flight to Dubai, that in itself was an indication of how good the script was. I was like ‘arey ye to phatt karke nikal gaya’ (Time flew by so quickly when I was reading it). I didn’t stop scrolling only,” he said with genuine surprise.

Ask him whether he was told why he was cast in that darker, meatier role of Nishi, it turns out neither director Vasan Bala asked him why he thought of Sikandar, nor did the actor ever thought of asking him about it. But why say yes to a small part when you are just witnessing something as rare as a ‘successful second innings’?

“It’s like a cameo only if you have to call it something. And it was something that I was aware about from the beginning,” the actor stated, but went on to add that he enjoyed the script so much he had to say yes.

We finally come to the poker chip sequence, the one that is arguably one of the best sequences from Monica, O My Darling. The actor said there was no rehearsal involved: “There was not a brief per se, we had one reading, a table read, that was it. I remember having a talk with Vasan (Bala) before we began shooting, I said ‘I hope this is not the scene we are starting with.’ He said no, we will do it at our own pace. And then again lockdown hit, and when we finally began, we started with that inn scene. It was my first day of the shoot. I said, arey bhai, and he was like ‘Don’t worry, it is quite easy.’ You know, we didn’t even rehearse it once. It is so great when you get to work with great talents because we all fed off from each other, it was very fluid.”

“Plus, the script was so beautifully written, so why fix something that is not broken? It all came together naturally,” said Sikandar when asked about possible improvisations.

One hint you get about Sikandar being a humble and generous artiste is when he forgets to mention he actually ‘improvised’ one of the more crucial aspects of the scene, small but no less significant for it. Sikandar was the one who suggested to the filmmaker that they should do the inn scene using poker chips, instead of going with a deck of cards.

Sikandar Kher played Nishi in Monica, O My Darling.

“Because it is king, queen and jack no, in the scene, so it was supposed to be a deck of cards initially,” he told us. However, that fell through as Sikandar couldn’t absorb the trick as completely as he wanted to since he was learning the sleight of hand via zoom. “I needed more time to get there, and we did not have the luxury of too much time. I used to play poker professionally a lot a long time ago, and that is how I knew some of the tricks that you could do with poker chips as well. One day I just recorded myself doing that and sent it to Vasan. I said ‘What about this sir?’ And Vasan said ‘this is great, do this instead.'” Vasan Bala got those poker chips especially made with the jack, king, queen inscribed on them.

But the weight of the custom-made poker chips was much heavier than that of the original, which made it slightly hard for the actor to practice his tricks.

“We had two sets, one set was sent to me, and they were made out of metal, they were quite heavy. They were nowhere close to the actual weight of a poker chip. I told Vasan, ‘Ye dumbbell bana ke bhej diya aapne mujhe’ (You have sent me dumbbells instead of regular poker chips). I just had to get used to the weight a little bit, but it was okay, it eventually happened (the trick),” the actor told us. In fact, it even became the ‘O’ of Monica, O My Darling in the title card.

“Everything works out,” Sikandar concluded with a hint of laugh.

Also starring Huma Qureshi, Rajkummar Rao and Radhika Apte among others, Monica, O My Darling is available to stream on Netflix.