Kunal Kemmu’s directorial debut Madgaon Express, starring an ensemble cast including Divyenndu, Pratik Gandhi, Avinash Tiwary, Nora Fatehi, Upendra Limaye and Chhaya Kadam, has taken over cinema halls. While audiences are laughing their heart out, they are also appreciating Kunal’s directorial prowess and the actors’ performances.
In this interview with indianexpress.com, Divyenndu, who broke out as a comedy actor with the 2011 comedy film Pyaar Ka Punchnama, and proved his versatility with Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, and his popular web-shows Mirzapur and The Railway Men, opens up about his journey as an actor, which he says is fabulous but has its own ups and downs, and shares how his FTII stint made him resilient and helped him cope with the tough times.
Divyenndu is doing a comedy after a long time. In fact, his last couple of projects, including Amazon Prime Video’s Mirzapur and Netflix’s The Railway Men, had a serious tone. On this, the actor says it was like a breath of fresh air to be a part of an out-and-out comedy, but that too is “hard work”.
“I am doing comedy after a while now. There were definitely jitters,” says Divyenndu. On whether he would be able to pull off a comedy, he says, “Every second day I used to go on set and check with Kunal (Kemmu, the director of Madgaon Express) if it was going ok with my bit. But again, it is so much work doing a comedy seriously. It takes so much discipline. You have to be there every day, very attentively, take after take.”
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“Specially the character I am playing — Dodo, he is a mad-hatter, he is up and about things, he is all over the place. At the same time, he is such a sentimental guy. I don’t know what Kunal was thinking while writing this character. It was not easy to play this character. At the same time, it was fun because you have fun people working with you, you have a good team, you have Excel (Entertainment) backing the project. So it all came together pretty nicely,” he adds.
Divyenndu and Kunal Kemmu sat together for this interview along with Nora Fatehi. Here, Kunal opened up about how “lack of good opportunities” motivated him to look for something different to do, and that’s how he got into directing Madgaon Express. The actor-turned-director also opened up about going through a phase of “self-doubt.”
Divyenndu, on being asked if he too felt the same in his acting career, and how he coped with it, said, “For me, the FTII training really helped. That gives you a certain kind of confidence. Putting in that hard work through the years gives you some substance in life.”
“But again, ya, it’s not easy. Like he (Kunal) said, when you know you have so much artillery to showcase, but people are just asking for that one particular thing…It’s a compliment. A lot of people take it as a compliment that people are asking for it, and I am going to keep giving you that. But it can be frustrating at the same time because you have this other ammunition as well that you want to launch, show people out there,” he added.
Divyenndu then opened up about the importance of “having faith in yourself” in the very competitive film industry and to survive on social media which, according to him, gives a “fake image” of people enjoying themselves all the time and living their dream.
“So, it is very tricky. I can understand people who are not in a good space, it’s not easy. It is such a competitive industry. And then social media is giving you a fake image of people enjoying life every day, every moment, living the dream and everything, it’s not easy. You have to be your own person. You have to have that faith in yourself somewhere,” Divyenndu concluded.
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