Dhruva Sarja: Martin’s the ‘biggest’ I’ve been and it wasn’t easy

Dhruva Sarja had to bulk up massively and was 110 kilos during the making of Martin

Dhruva Sarja in a still from the film

Dhruva Sarja has always been a fitness buff with quite the muscular frame. For his last film, Pogaru, in which he played a thug, he had to beef up further, which he wanted to shed thereafter, but the requirement for his next, Martin, was even more. The makers of the film wanted Dhruva to embody The Hulk and be in beast mode. The actor complied and bulked up massively, at the end of which he was a whopping 110 kilos, he says.

Dhruva Sarja: My brief for Martin was to put on weight, bulk up and look like a beast

Doing stunts was tough: Dhruva Sarja

The trouble with carrying a lot of muscle mass, though, says Dhruva, is that it makes one less flexible, which is not ideal in a film that has a lot of action sequences and dance as well. “It’s tough to do stunts with such a physique, but I had to do it and I believe I have given it my best. In fact, we have tried unique action sets in the film, some of which required me to do a lot of acrobatic moves,” said the actor, adding that the first 20 minutes and the last 20 minutes will be visual treats for audiences.

In fact, in one of the stunts, Dhruva had to fight against former UFC and WWE star Nathan Jones and bodybuilder Rubiel Mosquera, both of who took the assignment a little too seriously and threw a few punches at the actor. So much so that after a point, Dhruva had to get the stunt master involved to tell them that they didn’t have to really hit him and only needed to act as if they were.

Dhruva Sarja on Martin: ‘It is not just an action-packed suspense thriller, there’s also…’

The action apart, what’s also special about Martin, says Dhruva, is that compared to his other films, he doesn’t have too many lines to speak. Lengthy lines with punchlines galore are a Dhruva Sarja trademark, which will not be missing entirely, but not as many as seen earlier, he says.

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