“I could have out-danced Ash, Hrithik,” says Abhishek Bachchan

“I am convinced that I could have out danced Aishwarya and Hrithik Roshan, Bipasha and Uday ‘toh baye haath ka khel hai’,” says Abhishek Bachchan jokingly in this exclusive interview. ‘Dhoom 2’ is a sequel to ‘Dhoom’ and Abhi is one of the actors (other than Uday Chopra) who have been repeated in the sequel and obviously he is very excited about being a part of such a big film as this. As for his rivalry with Hrithik then Bachchan Junior feels that Roshan makes him work harder. Over to the man himself:

Did you expect Dhoom to be such a blockbuster in the first place?

We actors expect all our films to be blockbusters because we put that kind of effort into them, we hope for the best we’d all worked very hard, we knew we had something normal and unique and simple. We then worked towards making the best possible film that we could make and thankfully the audiences appreciated our efforts.

Dhoom 2 will be your first sequel, did you have to reprise your mannerisms and attitude from the first role?

(In jest) Actually my first sequel was ‘Lage Raho Munnabhai’, which I played a very prominent role, ….I did, I was the main guy in the film yaar, …then? So ‘Dhoom 2’ was my second sequel. Being a sequel it was that much more easier, because you know the character, you know what the character can do and cannot do and having worked on an entire film being that one particular character, it was interesting because in the sequel we just got to tweak Jai Dixit a bit but we didn’t have to establish his character as it was already established, so we got to play with him a bit, for e.g. in Dhoom 2 I feel Jai Dixit is slightly more relaxed that’s reflective in the way he dresses in his general attitude. I’d like to be believe he’s a bit more cooler in this film, cool in the sense he’s calmer and more level headed, has things more planned out.

How different or similar is Dhoom 2 from Dhoom?

It’s the same genre but I believe it’s a different film. I’d like to believe it’s a bigger and better film but being the same genre it can be associated as the same kind of film, but what I really liked about ‘Dhoom 2’ was that its not about fast bikes and thieves, it’s more than that. And at first I remember questioning Adi and Sanjay saying that it should have more of what the original had, to which Adi had a very good answer that if you give them the same thing again, they are going to get bored of it. The very reason why the audiences liked ‘Dhoom’ if you do that in ‘Dhoom 2’ they will say okay, what are you serving this time?

You have Hrithik and Aishwarya as your adversaries, what do they bring to the Dhoom board?

They bring a whole different dimension, they bring a whole lot more viewers we’d like to believe, we’ve been very selfish Uday and me in ‘Dhoom 2’, we’ve hired bigger stars so that more people come to watch the movie (in jest).

You have played a con man in Bunty Bubli and Bluffmaster, and in Dhoom 2 you play the cop, which is tougher and why?

Everything is challenging, the endeavour is to do challenging work and to push yourself to do work that you have not done in the past. So I thing everything has to be challenging, if it’s not challenging, it’s not going to be fun, and you’re not going to enjoy what you are doing and if you are not enjoying what you are doing, then you are going to be dishonest to your profession, which is sacrilege for us. Having said that, keeping in mind that I believe that your work should be challenging, the challenge in Dhoom 2 was to make Jai Dixit that much more interesting than he was in the first part, yes, he’s the same character and I am repeating myself here, but that’s where the challenge lay, having kept the same foundation, how do you make him more interesting this time round, how do you retain the audiences attention on him?

How did you like the music of Dhoom 2 as compared to Dhoom?

(Answered all in jest in his inimitable style) I think the music of ‘Dhoom 2’ is weaker than Dhoom …that’s because I only have one song in this film and in another song I am standing by the bar. I am convinced that I could have out danced Aishwarya and Hrithik Roshan, Bipasha and Uday ‘toh baye haath ka khel hai’. I have only 1 song in ‘Dhoom 2’ in ‘Dhoom’ I had 3 songs. I think it’s very unfair…but what can I do. It’s nice music

Did you do your stunts yourself and what was it like?

We did a lot of the stunts, but being an action film, there are a lot of safety precautions that are taken. Amin our stunt co-coordinator especially is very meticulous when it comes to safety and very very particular, so there are a lot of stunts that every actor is very willing to do and very keen to do buy Amin didn’t allow us coz he thought that we didn’t really need to do it. He believes in the mantra of safety first, and that his actors don’t need to do each and every stunt.

Did you feel you were in competition with Hrithik while shooting the film?

No not at all, I’ve never been one person who believes in competition, instead of competition I would like to believe Hrithik is more of an inspiration for me. He makes me work harder, he makes me a better actor, and he makes me want to do my best, so he’s more inspiration than competition.

Source: IndiaGlitz