PremiumAbhishek Banerjee on playing brutal roles in Mirzapur, Paatal Lol, and Apurva: I make a lot of effort to confuse the audience | Exclusive
As Abhishek Banerjee gears up to play another brutal character in Apurva, he sat down for an exclusive chat with OTTplay.
Last Updated: 08.04 PM, Nov 15, 2023
For an actor who was first a casting director himself, Abhishek Banerjee has the added pressure to perform every time he takes on a new character, and he never disappoints. In his time as an actor until now, the actor has given us some very memorable characters and ones that have had us laughing profoundly. But the highlight of his career has to be the two dark roles he played in Mirzapur and Paatal Lok and the third he now embodies in Apurva. In an exclusive chat with OTTplay, Abhishek dissects what about these roles lures him.
In Mirzapur, Abhishek Banerjee played Compounder, a very brief but impactful part. At the end of his arc, he left the show, becoming a household name. He continued the streak with Paatal Lok, where he embodies Hatoda Tyagi, a ruthless man who doesn’t think twice before smashing someone’s skull. Both performances brought him critical acclaim and love from the audience.
No, as Abhishek Banerjee gears up to play another brutal character in Apurva , released on Disney+ Hotstar, he sat down to have a chat with us and also talk about these dark roles. When asked what this trajectory is where he either scares people or makes them laugh their guts out, Banerjee said, “I don’t plan it at all, ya. But yes, whenever I play something dark, I make a lot of effort to confuse the audience. Even in compounder, Mirzapur, I think, he is a maniac, but when he dies, a lot of people are like he shouldn’t have died.”.
Abhishek Banerjee added, “And that is exactly the darkness inside you. I want to talk. Everybody has a dark side. Devashish Makhija, after doing Ajji, told me, ‘I was confused about rape crimes, and I am confused about this whole thing.’ Every man can choose to be a rapist; that’s the thing. It’s the side you choose. So it is like self-correcting through your life because whatever has been taught to you by your parents and teachers, they never really told you about gender equality, and suddenly, at a certain age, everybody is talking about that, so everybody is confused. So there are notions around it.”
Talking about how he looks at these evil men, Abhishek Banerjee said, “Where did the confusion exactly emerge? It did since childhood, the conditioning. So, to play a character like that, I just want to show the conditioning. I don’t want to judge him. Let me be true to what the character is. He is having a lot of fun in his life; I don’t know how. I don’t know how he wakes up every morning and feels like a god. I just perform that and let the audience decide. “
Catch the conversation right below:
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