Akshay Kumar: Rajini sir says a simple hello with such charisma that it leaves you mesmerised

Akshay Kumar: Rajini sir says a simple hello with such charisma that it leaves you mesmerised

Reinvention has been the story of Akshay Kumar’s career so far. He’s gone

from being an action hero to pulling off comedy roles and social dramas

with ease and conviction. But through his diverse career, he has never

done a film like 2.0 and by his own admission, he’s never experienced the

grist and gruel of a CGI and make-up heavy movie. In a chat with BT, the

actor talks about the travails of being trapped in multiple layers of makeup

and the hours spent getting out of his costume and character. But he

agrees that epic films like this need that much sweat and blood to go into

it. Excerpts...

‘2.0’ has been in the making for three years, it has a mammoth budget,

too. How do you feel about the expectations around the film?

It is the biggest film of my career and it is India’s biggest film to date. It has

a budget of 510 crore and that’s huge. There’s a lot of nervousness and excitement, because the sheer magnitude of the

project makes it a big risk. But the good thing about ‘2.0’ is that it will release in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi, so it has a

very good scope for earning money across diverse markets not just in the country, but around the world. Another thing that will

work in favour of the film is that the publicity and promotions of the film haven’t really revealed the true story. Everything has

been kept under the wraps, so the audiences will have something to look forward to.

The audience also hasn’t really seen you playing a villain before. Were you looking forward to playing a character with grey

shades?

I have played bad guy roles before, so this wasn’t really about the chance to play an antagonist. What I really liked about the

film was the screenplay and my character in particular. I’m not the sort of actor who thinks about these things too much.