Actor and heartthrob Shahid Kapoor is currently busy on a promotional spree for his upcoming film Deva. Today, on January 28, he reached the HT City office for HT City’s Stars In the City, along with his beautiful co-star Pooja Hegde. During the fun chat, Shahid spoke about his film, his character as well as his experience of working with Pooja for the first time. The actor also clarified that he did not take a dig at Salman Khan in a recent podcast, which was a question many fans had on their minds. But that’s not all! Much to our delight, Shahid even opened up about choosing grey characters such as Kabir Singh and revealed if his wife Mira Rajput helps him pick scripts.
When asked if he asks Mira before signing a film or makes her read the script, Shahid joked, “She’s too expensive, I can’t afford her.” On a serious note, he shared, “No, I think that decision to do a film should be your decision. You should own it completely.” Shahid went on to add, “But I talk to everybody, I discuss it with everybody, I take their point of view. I use it as fodder to ponder over it. But eventually, that final decision, it has to be yours because it’s your journey, it’s your career, it’s your personal growth, it’s your next step in your life. So you have to take complete ownership of it. So that decision always rests with me.”
Well, when Shahid’s film Kabir Singh (2019) released, audiences had a lot to say about it. Some called it his best performance till date whereas others accused the team of glamorising toxic masculinity. Did someone at home have anything to say about it? Hearing this, Shahid shared, “I’m just very proud of that film. Toh mere na andar se ek pride hai that we did something, which is… see because mere liye naa playing a character who has issues or a character who has grey shades, or a character who has dark shades, or a character who has things that might be disturbing, as the protagonist of the film, like it’s my dream come true.”
Shahid explained that since childhood he has been watching films where the heroes were always ‘good’ characters. But as an actor, he fundamentally had a problem with this after he witnessed terrific performances, such as Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (1976) or Al Pacino in Scarface (1983). Shahid explained that as an actor, he is not afraid to show the truth onscreen. He went on to add, “It’s not a personal judgement of me. I don’t need to like the character I play. I need to be able to understand the character I play. People should choose to like or dislike. And if they dislike a character I play I feel I have won because I was able to convince them not to like me. And I think that is so interesting as an actor.”
Shahid concluded that he respects all opinions. But while playing the character, he wants to be honest to the character without ‘cleaning it up’. Well, this is a major reason why we are so excited to see Shahid as a cop on a revenge spree in Deva on January 31. We wish him all the best!