Ayushmann Khurrana: ‘I was expecting love, but this was tremendous love’

Ayushmann Khurrana presses ‘play’. Golden shards of sunlight sweep into view as autos bob up and down on the screen of his smartphone. Instrumental music wafts in the background. Seated across a low table in the anodyne environs of Mumbai’s Yashraj Film Studios, Khurrana is in the regulation jeans, t-shirt, large baseball cap and chunky spectacles — the staple of youth cool. Dimples crack his face as he surveys the Instagram video he has shot.

“Only a tourist can capture a city like this,” he says when the clip ends. “If you are a part of the city you won’t see its beauty.”

This sun-dappled traffic scene is enough to send into rhapsody India’s current favourite star, a Chandigarh-raised Mumbai transplant who can still see magic in the banal. This show-and-tell is meant to serve as an analogy, as he frames his response to a question about his perceived status as a film industry outsider.

“It makes me more enthusiastic and makes me feel fresh,” he says. “I approach every film as my first film. It gives me that perspective. It’s good to be an outsider.”

Now the self-fashioned outsider has just made it to the inside of the mythic ₹100-crore club, with his latest film Badhaai Ho raking in more than ₹115 crore. His October release, Andhadhun is in its seventh week, collecting ₹70 crore, and counting. Khurrana, 34, a confessed mathematics dud, had a rough idea what the films would make; they ended far surpassing that. “That was quite a surprise,” he says. “I was expecting love, but this was tremendous love.”

Six years and 10 films ago, few knew of Khurrana outside the world of radio where he was a presenter. But in 2012, with his debut film Vicky Donor , he brought to the screen his brand of affable, accessible charm — and won over the viewer. He was tall, but not too tall, good-looking without being a demi-god, obviously charismatic and yet reassuringly familiar.

The fulcrum of his appeal is this relatability. He could be you. He could be me. Actually, he literally could have been me, sitting on the opposite side of the interview table. “I have seen this industry from two perspectives: as an interviewer and an interviewee,” he says. While he cut his teeth quizzing people on radio, this mass communications postgraduate, with a love for writing, had considered journalism a career option. He reflects on the ongoing exchange. “It’s quite surreal,” he smiles. “But it’s fun.”

What’s possibly even more fun is this: four successive hits ( Badhaai Ho , Andhadhun , Shubh Mangal Saavdhan and Bareilly Ki Barfi ) have collectively mopped up more than ₹325 crore at the box office in just over a year. He is now a money-making, critic-pleasing, bona fide Bollywood star.

To which, the obvious first question is: How? What’s in the water he is drinking? Where does he get his ‘X-ray vision’ from — the ability to see the finished trappings of a blockbuster in the raw script? “For me novelty matters; uniqueness matters. It has to be different,” he says. “I come later; the script comes first.”

Khurrana looks at a script with the studied precision of a suit. “There has to be a certain value creation, a good marriage between content and entertainment,” he says. “It has to be a good balance. There has to be no reference point in earlier films in Indian cinema.”

His filmography is studded with counter-intuitive, convention-defying productions. He gets rich by donating sperm in Vicky Donor ; he is a young groom saddled with a “gent’s problem” in Shubh Mangal Saavdhan; and the disaffected husband of an overweight woman in Dum Laga Ke Haisha .

 

In Andhadhun , he is a blind pianist trapped in an escalating web of deceit and intrigue. In Badhaai Ho, he is the petulant adult son of an elderly couple expecting a child.

Sperm donation, erectile dysfunction, the lively libido of senior citizens — his films grapple with territory some might consider “risqué”. “I think that’s my USP, probably — my space,” he says. “I created that with Vicky Donor .” As an actor he has become the gold standard for the golden mean.

Khurrana’s characters tend to be unheroic, drafted from the ranks of the ordinary — a video store owner, a printing press owner or a marketing professional. These men often have a North Indian, middle-class background, and are marked by their resolute everyman-ness. “Apart from Andhadhun , realism is the common thread,” he says. “I can relate to these characters.”

His approach to acting springs from this bedrock of reality — from imbibing the mannerisms and ways of people he came across during his years as a street theatre performer or as an RJ interacting with the average on-air caller. “These experiences made me more rooted and in touch with reality, because I know these people. Probably I am one of them,” he says. “Life is the biggest workshop, you have to observe life. You have to be one with the milieu more than anything else.”

He rejects the immersive studiedness of method acting — something he followed in his earlier theatre years — preferring to channel a looser, more free-wheeling spirit before the camera. “I’ve become more spontaneous as an actor,” he says. “I can switch on and switch off very easily.” He snaps his fingers. “I’ll be laughing or cracking a joke, and when you say ‘action’, I can do a serious scene.”

Director Sriram Raghavan knew he had found his lead for Andhadhun within half an hour of their interaction following the script’s narration. “He is a natural,” says Raghavan. “Often I would not give him the exact lines and ask him to improvise, do it his way. He is an actor with a high emotional quotient.”

That intuitive intelligence and unshowy flair have always found favour with critics, whom he follows closely. “Most of my films thrive on reviews. They are word-of-mouth films,” he says. “I get commercial acclaim because of critical acclaim. It’s a chain reaction.” Both Andhadhun and Badhaai Ho have been gliding along this trajectory, gathering momentum as days pass and praise fuels ticket sales.

Some have likened him to Amol Palekar, the unfussy icon of 1970s socially realist cinema. But Khurrana’s success is much more mainstream and specific to this cultural moment, a success that has to be read against the rise of a new kind of Hindi indie. These small-budget, more “rooted” films depict socio-economic realities, their character-driven stories and gritty aesthetic marking a departure from the old Bollywood fare.

These aren’t arthouse films or didactic projects. Rather, they navigate the aspirations and ambiguities of urban India and treat the conflicts and contradictions of class and gender in unexpected ways. “His films give us a hint as to what the new Indian middle classes are all about: affluence, consumerism and urbanity, even amongst the erstwhile small-town populations,” says Kaushik Bhaumik, cinema scholar and associate professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Critics, however, are starting to flag the repetitive inflections in his performances or the refuge he takes in playing variations of the bumbling bloke beset by awkward dilemmas. For instance, he is playing a Delhi boy for the fourth time in Badhaai Ho . It’s a challenge, he admits, and one he tackles by experimenting with different accents.

Even so, Andhadhun has been a clear departure. Keen to work in a thriller, he sought out the role and approached Raghavan when he heard about the film.

 

As a musician — Khurrana sings and plays the guitar — the opportunity to play one on screen was tempting. But the similarities ended there. The zany set-up, the outrageous twists and the galloping pace were nothing like his previous films. And the open-ended climax — which the team debated at length — was the most unsettling for him. “I am used to doing slice-of-life films,” he says. But the director wanted it “ambiguous”, leaving people to discuss and debate it, he adds. “That was not my scene.”

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Growing up in Chandigarh, by the age of five he knew he wanted to be an actor. It was only while studying literature in college that he “confessed” this desire to his parents. But it was already obvious to them, given his worshipping at the altar of Hindi cinema, touring the country with plays, setting up theatre groups, and singing. Later, as his work on television and the radio grew, so did his popularity.

 

He had the face for radio, but did he have the ‘face’ for cinema? His writer-director wife Tahira Kashyap — who recently underwent preventive mastectomy to beat breast cancer — laughed when he announced his silver screen dreams. Her first response, he recalls, was: “ Shakal dekhi ? (Have you seen what you look like?) How can you be an actor?”

In 2009, he was picked along with Nikhil Chinapa to host the first season of India’s Got Talent (IGT), a general entertainment show from a global franchise, on Colors TV. “Ayushmann had the dimpled, wide-eyed boy-next-door appeal, coming across unaffected and unscripted,” says Siddhartha Basu, founder and original promoter of Big Synergy and producer of the first two seasons of IGT . “But critically, while contemporary and ‘with it’, he had one foot firmly grounded in Hindi- bhashi sensibility and language, had an ability to think on his feet, a super sense of the drama intrinsic to the show, and gelled effortlessly with guests and his co-host.” Anita Kaul Basu, also a Big Synergy founder-promoter and producer, adds: “He was earnest, diligent, a man of few words, with no swag, no bad attitude.”

The transition to the big screen was only a matter of time. When Khurrana first entered the industry, he expected certain kinds of parts — Shah Rukh Khan in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa , Aamir Khan in Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar or in Rangeela . “I had come with a lot of dream roles in my head,” he says. “But the roles I got were more crazy and bizarre than anything I had thought.” In Mumbai, it wasn’t Munna and Sanju who awaited him, it was Vicky, a character with no precedent in Hindi cinema. He wasn’t director Shoojit Sircar’s first choice, but they needed a fresh face, and Sircar approached Khurrana.

This was not alien turf for him, personally — to Sircar’s surprise he had donated sperm many years ago — but it was alien turf for coy, risk-averse Bollywood. Or so he was warned. “A lot of naysayers said, ‘How can you do that as your first film, it will be a disaster’,” he recalls. “But I was really confident because the script was so amazing.” The ₹4-crore film eventually made ₹45 crore and won a National Award. “It was a case study of a kind... with great returns on investment,” he says.

Vicky Donor marked Khurrana out as a fresh young talent, but what followed was a fallow patch, with films such as Meri Pyaari Bindu and Hawaizaada failing to energise the box office. Khurrana had to reboot. “I’ve realised whenever I follow my gut, the films go right; when I take 100 opinions they always go wrong.” He decided not to be swayed by factors such as the director, leading actor or production house behind a project. “Then we forget the basics,” he explains before reaffirming that the script has to be good. “It’s as simple as that.”

 

In the past two years his discernment has stood out, an ability that he has fine-tuned as a “late bloomer”. “He goes for great stories and characters, and has an understanding of what people want to watch,” says Bhumi Pednekar, his co-star from Dum Laga Ke Haisha and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan .

His instinct does power his choices, but there’s also a canny commercial calculus undergirding it. Is the film entertaining? Will it appeal to the common man? Will people be tickled, moved or horrified? “The masses with routine 9-to-5 jobs and mundane lives don’t want to see darkness,” says Khurrana, whose astrologer father added the extra letters to his name for luck (he didn’t have to do that for his younger son, the actor Aparshakti, as it was spelt just right, Khurrana had said in an earlier interview).

Ultimately, he adds, it’s entertainment that sells. He expands on this analysis. “We live in an industry which thrives on commercial success. Talent comes later. Nobody will question you if your films are doing well. That’s the hard truth of the industry,” he says. “Even if you are average, you are the star if your films are doing well. I understood this,” he says, and pauses for effect, “quite late in life.” He laughs. “I started choosing scripts that would be palatable to the masses, those that would resonate.”

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Recently, after shooting the climax of Andhadhun in Poland, the crew visited Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp where more than a million, mostly Jews, were killed during World War II. The visit left him shaken. “It was so moving and eerie. You just feel the negativity in the air,” he says. “I consumed so much of Auschwitz in that one day.” Modern and Mughal history are particular passions, he bashfully admits, when asked what he reads.

History, literature, poetry: his high-minded predilections appear to sit easily with his patently popular aspirations. “An intellectual star?” I venture. He recoils from the words. “No, no, nothing like that,” says Khurrana, who has two sons. “I am a hardcore commercial film buff, but history just intrigues me.”

So can this middle-cinema maven fit into larger budget, larger-than-life films, where social realism is jettisoned for heightened emotion? He certainly hopes to do classically filmi films like the ones he adored growing up, but is waiting for the right opportunity and the perfect vehicle. Other things on his wish list include playing “an out-and-out aggressive guy” and directing and producing a film.

Was there ever a back-up plan if films didn’t work out? “You know, my entire life is like a back-up plan,” he jokes, referring to all the identities from the box set of his resume: RJ, VJ, singer, presenter. “All those experiences,” Pednekar reasons, “have made him a superman of acting.”

Meanwhile, Khurrana is getting ready for his next project — reportedly a film with Balaji Motion Pictures and another from the BR Chopra stable. His brother, referring to his recent hits, posted a congratulatory message on Twitter and ended on a hopeful note about the future. “…all this is cool but I know your best is yet to come,” Aparshakti tweeted. Only I know that, the younger brother added in parentheses and capital letters. He, and a million other fans.

Bhavya Dore is a Mumbai-based journalist