Exclusive! Abir Chatterjee on playing an Army man in Avrodh 2: Wearing the uniform gives you goosebumps

Abir Chatterjee is all set to step into the Hindi language industry with SonyLIV's Avrodh 2 that features Sanjay Suri, Mohan Agashe, Aahana Kumra, Neeraj Kabi and others in lead. This is also the actor’s first step into OTT. In an exclusive chat with OTTplay, the actor shared his excitement on being part of this show (out on June 24), which is based on journalist Shiv Aroor and author Rahul Singh’s 2017 book India’s Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes.

Abir has so far been part of several detective franchises, including Byomkesh Bakshi, Sonada and so on. In a solo outing, he has also played Feluda in Sandip Ray’s Badshahi Angti. In Avrodh 2, the actor will be seen as an Indian Army special force personnel. Talking about his character, he said, “I was in Kashmir for 16 days to shoot. While shooting, I understood a part of the difficulty that the Indian Army faces. I was there for a shoot and they live there and fight to keep us safe. Also, wearing the Army uniform gives goosebumps.”

Abir spoke about special fitness training that went into the prep for the role: “We went to Army training camps to see the real picture. But it is a lifestyle that one gets into when they join the Indian Armed Force. That cannot be copied in a couple of visits to their camp. I try to stay fit. That helps.”

Also read: Avrodh S2 trailer: Abir Chatterjee takes the lead on unveiling ‘International money laundering’ 

In the first season of Avrodh, Amit Sadh plays the lead in the series as Major Videep Singh. Avrodh 2 is a part of SonyLiv’s series of fresh set of movies and webseries. Besides Avrodh 2, the streaming platform has also announced the fresh seasons of Scam, Maharani and Rocket Boys.

Abir also spoke about venturing into Hindi language content, noting that the scale of Avrodh 2 is much bigger than the kind of work he has done in Tollywood. "I’ll give you an example. Suppose it starts raining at a Bengali film shooting. What do you do then? Since we work on a limited budget and time, we try to figure out if we could shoot something else during that time. In the case of Avrodh 2, it was completely different. If a shooting gets postponed due to some unforeseen reason, there are people to take care of that. It will be adjusted peacefully without us being involved at all. In Tollywood, I am not just an actor but also a stakeholder. My seniority insists that I take some more responsibility. That is not necessary for Bollywood. They can afford to have a bigger scale to take care of such things," he said.