 All right, I think we're good. Are you good? Yes. All right. Excellent. Excellent. Hey, welcome back. We are here with Rahul. Am I saying this right, Bose? Yes. Okay. I just want to want to make sure I'm not saying it too white. But thank you so much. It's amazing how four letters can confuse why you did it. Yes, it's true. It's Bose, Bose. I'm like Bose. The civil and yes. Exactly. Thank you. Close. Thank you so much for sitting down with us. We're here promoting obviously his new film, Berlin, which we've seen loved, loved your performance. As an actor, what drew you to choose this film? Look, you can smell a good film a mile away. Yeah. So when you read, when I read the script, I knew this was going to be, have you watched any of John Likare's books made into movies, Smiley's People and so it's got the same vibe. It's got the who is actually doing what kind of vibe. Very much. And it has, in fact, John Likare's world is set in the 70s and 80s. Lots of browns and lots of olives and everybody looks necessarily dowdy and there's a gloom to it. So when I sat down with the script, I could literally feel it. I could see the film and I found it to be, you know, it's gripping. Having said that, this film has been made on the editing table. Because as a script, you're thinking, hmm, will this hold? Will this hold? And then on the editing table, you really have to mess with people's minds, so to speak. And the editor has done a fantastic job. And I think that Atul must have sat on the edit himself because he is such an acute observer of life and cinema that I'm pretty sure he must have, you know, I'm pretty sure it's, he has a big role to play in that. I'm not taking anything away from the editor, but just suffice to say that I think this film was really made on the editing table. Absolutely. And it was, the contributions of the entire cast when we watched the film was uniformly fantastic. And we have seen you a number of times, obviously. Michael But in all sincerity, and obviously this is fresh, we have just watched it, it is for me, one of my favorite roles I've ever seen you portray. And one of the things that was most captivating for me was the physicality of your character. Did you actually, I know you're very physical, you were, you're formerly a rugby captain, are you not? I played for India for 11 years. Yeah, I thought so. Yeah. And did you do anything else with your physicality with this role? Or did you just take who you are now? No, I actually put on four kilos of my stomach. I thought so. You looked big. Yeah, you looked like you. Yeah. I wanted him to be bloated. I wanted him to be, to have, the corruption is all here. I wanted him to have that stuffed up, bloaty kind of feel to him. So you get a sense that he's corrupt before you even, before he even opens his mouth. Apart from that, I also wanted a bullish quality. That kind of, like a ram using his horns, like a ram. Yeah, there's a lot of lean in for him. And it's like, he should be scary. You don't want to mess with this guy. Right. So to create that sense of scariness, I decided to not so much put on muscle as to put on a layer of fat, you know, and of course, we wore a couple of, you know, those pullovers and stuff. So you get the sense that he's more bloaty than I am in life. And also definitely worked on his body language, which was super aggressive and super unpleasant, you know. He's not the kind of person you want to massage you to sleep. At your peril. Maybe, maybe. But you just said so many things that we know you're a theatrically trained actor. And it's no shock, obviously, watching your work. But where do those things, this one in particular, come from? Does it come from all the script, the director, how much of it comes from us collaborative in this character? It's a great question. Whenever, and this is Pauline Kale included, whenever I've read any critic talking about a film, and they criticize an actor's performance, they never criticize the director. Because if you're a halfway decent actor, you can tell the director, look, I can pitch it here. I can pitch it here. And I can pitch it here. Which of these three or four, which do you want? Which do you want? And it's the director who actually has the entire arc of the entire film in her mind or his mind. And so they can say, no, no, no, no, that's, no, you're going to have to pitch it here because the rest of my film is at that pitch. So whenever actors are accused of underplaying or overplaying, you, I just keep saying, why are you blaming the actor? Who told them to, yeah. Right. Absolutely. It's easy for us to do more or do less. Right. As I said, if you're halfway talented, therefore, to answer your question, a large part of the credit for this should go to the director. If it works, the director should be standing there, taking the boughs for the acting. Because the same actor and me included, we have done an indifferent job a number of times because we haven't been directed correctly. Yeah. So I would very much like to place on record that our performance is the graphing, the arcing of the director. Yeah. And for that, he should be given a lot of credit for that. Absolutely. At the end of the day, you can finally just have to, there's the audience of one for those 60 days. Right. And you're just relying on that audience to graph it properly. Sometimes, even when he's certain, I'm like, listen, you can throw this out in the edit, I'm just going to do one more take, which is a little bigger and see where it goes. And he's like, he would never say no. But I knew he knew. But looking back now at the edit, I really can't tell which one he's chosen. Yeah, of course. But as a director myself, I always consider it so important to give the director a choice because often I've said, damn it, I wish she had just held that look a little bit longer. I wish we had taken another take. I wish, is there something where she's looking gentler and he's like, no, I'm like, damn it, I should have done that. So when I'm on this side of the camera, I'm always trying to think, how can I reduce the frustration of the director? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Now you had said, obviously, you knew from the minute you read the script, which I can only imagine, everybody reading it must have felt that way. And then the final product is that, did you feel that sense of this is going to be special on the day as you were filming? Or were there a lot of questions because you... No, you're right. The former is right. I always knew this was going to be special. You can see the art direction. Yes. You can see the clothes and you walk into a set of like, okay, this is... And it's not that he's hitting you on the head with period film, period film, 40 years ago, 40 years ago, I'm so clever. These, you know, no, it's just there. Exactly. It's like breathing. So I think that idea and came to us. When I walked on to the set, I realized that the brutalist buildings, you know, the buildings with the 1970s, when brutalism was a big thing in Indian architecture, especially in government buildings, the clothes we wore, the kind of body language everybody had, it was clear that this was going to be good. The only thing is you don't know how good. Right. So I think that, and I'm happy to say this, every three, now every three or four years, something comes up in my career, which is like, I would say, that's a punctuation mark. And you're hoping for about 15 punctuation marks in your career. Of course. You know, if you're, even De Niro, Pacino, I mean, all of them, if you ask people, they'll say they'll name about eight or 10 films. So you're lucky if you can get those. And I really think Berlin will be one of those punctuation marks. As do I. Absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. Completely agree. And as an actor, not the director, obviously part of you, there's some actors that when they do a take, they want to see it. They want to see it. You never trust your director completely. I never go to the camera, to the video set, never. Unless the guy or the woman says, come to the video village, have a look at, you're not understanding what I'm saying. If you can come here, you see what's happening with the light or something like that. I'm like, okay, let me, then let me have a look. But I have absolutely no interest in what I, what I, what I feel when I watch that, because it's her film, it's his film. Right. Exactly. Finally, they're going to use the take they want to. I can say whatever I can, you know, it's, this is not my call. And so when I'm directing, I resent actors coming and having a look at their work. If they, if it makes them feel easier, if it makes them feel happier, that's fine. But they can certainly have a look and walk away because I know exactly what I want. And unless the actor says, look, I am going to try some, I would never say no. But that doesn't mean you have to come to the video village for that. You can stand there and say, I'm going to try something else. Right. Right. So I have zero curiosity. I think actors who go and watch their stuff, a major part of them are do it because they're insecure, all actors are insecure. But I've just learned to say, if I get into that syndrome of looking at myself in every shot, then I'm constantly looking at my character as opposed to being the guy. Well said. I just want to be the guy. Well said. You know, you want to photograph me, photograph me. You want to photograph my back? I don't care. I'm just going to be the guy. Yeah. You know. Yeah. That's a great way to just wrap up. How do you, how do you act? Just be the guy. Yeah. Yeah. You should be able to, yeah, I keep saying to when I have, when I conduct workshops, you should be able to smell his breath. You should be able to smell his breath. Then, then that's fine. And there should be no, there should be no awareness that they saw a good performance. Yeah. The film, lovely film. And it was a walk away as opposed to wow. You know, it's just a good film never, ever brings attention to itself in parts. It brings attention to itself as a whole. As a whole, yes. And another performance I wanted to ask you about was your performance in Bulbul. Actually, when you played the two, which we love that film, loved your performance in it. What was your process creating those two characters in one film? You guys, seriously, it was. So here's the thing. When you're playing somebody who's mentally challenged, okay, this is a 10-year-old boy trapped in a 40-year-old man's body, right? Basically, shit, fuck, eat. Right. These are the three things that animals do. Right. Okay? Shit, fuck, eat, shit, fuck, eat, and, you know, and start again. So this, I'm talking about the mentally challenged twin, he's the son, he's the brother of the guy who owns the whole village. He's the son of the father who owned the whole district. So he just has to point and he gets. Right. He just points and he gets. So similarly, and I was talking to Tripti when I was doing the scene, I was like, and the director much before. Yeah. And I said, look, at the time when he rapes you, he just sees. He gets hard, like a 40-year-old man would. Right. And when he gets hard, he just wants to fuck. Right. He'll just put his penis into anything. Right. Right. You know, it doesn't matter. Yeah. He'll see a woman in the village, he'll see, just he'll point to his mother who can say. Right. Right. So he, so I said, this is what he's doing, but he does it like a 40-year-old. Mm-hmm. He eats the meal size of a 40-year-old and he, you know, and he goes to the Lou and it's the Lou is like a 40-year-old. Right. Right. Everything else is like a 10-year-old. Yeah. But a spoiled 10-year-old. Mm-hmm. A 10-year-old who is desperately spoiled, who gets everything he wants. So that's how I constructed his, you know, his thing. Yeah, his psychology. His psychology. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you play him, this is where director becomes so important. When you play somebody who's mentally challenged, you do too little and people will say, not a good actor. Right, that didn't work. You do too much. Oh, God. Yeah. You're right. Absolutely. So how, what do you do? So my greatest anxiety as an actor was during Bulbul, because I did not know where to pitch it. And I relied heavily on Anvita. And we did different degrees. In many scenes, we did different degrees. I said, take it, take it, just so that you can decide later. And I finally sent her a message when she was editing. And I said, the lightest touch on this boy. If it doesn't work, don't use it. Yeah, yeah. I don't mind you cutting my roll down by 50%. But if anything is not working, just let it go. Because this will ruin your film. Because he's such a vivid character, it'll ruin your film. Aside from that, to play the other, to play the other guy, I think he's just driven by the fact that he is not capable of making a girl with the beauty and the youth of Bulbul fall in love with him. Right. He has to use his power to get her. And that, the knowing guilt, not the guilt, the knowing inadequacy of the man infects his entire. That's why I use that. If I can't get her, I'll use my power. But it's just not enough. And there's a younger, virile boy who's there. And I'm going to destroy myself and destroy her in the process. But it's two tough ones, really tough. I was exhausted day after day after day. There's a scene where I'm running down the corridor as the boy who's just raped and she's obviously dead. And he runs away and he runs into his room. And we did that run down the corridor about 14 times. But before that run, I would have to run 10 times that to get to the point of that time. Right, to look like you have been run. Yeah. So I must have done about maybe two or three miles in short sprints during that time. But all of that put aside, it was the director. The director handled the subject, handled me with such sensitivity, Anvita. Really, it is true. As actors, it's about time we stood up and said, 90% of the work that I've done is because of that person there. Yes, director's medium, man. It is, it is the director's medium. Thank you so much for sitting down with us. Because this was everything I expected from an actor of your caliber to talk craft like this. We could talk like this for two hours. And so thank you so much for sitting down. Last question. Has anybody ever told you you look like the Indian Rufus Swell? No, but I've been told I look like Mads Mickelson. Oh, I think there is a relationship to Mads Mickelson. Do you know who Rufus Swell is? Do you know, are you familiar with him? Yes, yes. That's a good looking man. He's a good looking man. And Mads Mickelson is a good looking man. I'm just the before and they're the after. So thank you so much for sitting down on this roll. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much.