Divyenndu walks onto a set and stands on his mark, awaiting a cue from filmmaker Martin Scorsese. His co-stars are Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, both of whom are deep in discussion over a scene with him.
That hasn’t happened yet, the actor chuckles, but he admits this has been his dream since graduating from FTII in 2006 and venturing into the commercial landscape of the Hindi film industry.
But Divyenndu wasn’t a mainstream Hindi cinema fan growing up — he was raised on movies by Sai Paranjpye, Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Satyajit Ray. Nearly 15 years after his debut in Pyaar Ka Punchnama, he has built his career inside the very machinery he was sceptical of — Yash Raj, Excel, Luv Ranjan — while somehow keeping himself, as he puts it, uncorrupted. With a Telugu debut in Peddi, and the Mirzapur film and a Madgaon Express sequel on the horizon as well, he’s finally in a position to be greedy.
Edited excerpts from the conversation.
Take us back to 2011 and Pyaar Ka Punchnama?
We shot the film around 2010. I had come out of FTII and was trying to find my feet in Mumbai; I was just happy to be doing something. It was an exciting time as it was my first big commercial film. I wasn’t exactly nervous, but I was mindful of the film’s stance. Coming from a theatre background, it wasn’t easy to initially accept that specific point of view, but I knew the intentions weren’t bad (laughs).
When it released in 2011, it was a total underdog. The first few days weren’t very appreciative; we were told not to go by weekend numbers because our gain would be the weekdays. It picked up by word of mouth and suddenly we hit 50 days. It felt like a movement.
Has your instinct about stories remained intact over these 15 years?
Fortunately, it’s still there because I haven’t corrupted myself with the ‘sho sha (grandeur)’ of the industry. There is so much noise about how an actor should be, how you should position yourself or do your PR. I’ve kept myself away from that. It has helped me keep a pure core understanding of how I read scripts and pick characters.
I am more mindful now of who is making the film and their intentions. I’ve learned that the script isn’t the only thing; every department is vital. If one goes out of sync, it derails the project. Earlier, I was naive enough to do projects where I eventually realised the producer or director didn’t have the right understanding.
Mirzapur broke your comedy typecast; Munna became larger than life. Are you enjoying that freedom?
Thoroughly. I always wanted to be an actor who transforms for each character. Mirzapur showed the fraternity that I can do other things. The best part is that after Mirzapur, I didn’t get a single character similar to Munna.
Before that, I was a bit of a crybaby because I was only getting happy-go-lucky, boy-next-door roles. I wasn’t enjoying them because I had theatre training and didn’t go to film school just to do the same thing. In theatre, you audition for a part and if you suit it, you get it — there’s no preconceived notion. To fight that in the film industry was uncomfortable. People were offering me the same characters as a ‘compliment’, and that’s precisely what I didn’t want.
You do angst very well in Glory and Mirzapur. Where does that come from?
I think it’s my love for drama. Personally, I don’t enjoy doing comedies as much. I like emotional investigation and disturbance in a character. Maybe because my real life is so opposite to these characters, I’m drawn to them. For a character like Dev in Glory, his rage comes from being emotionally immature. He doesn’t know how to put things into words, so he gets frustrated.
What pisses you off in real life?
Fake people. And people who don’t know their job but pretend they do. On sets, if I see someone not being serious, I can’t take that. If your hair and jawline are more important to you than the scene, that pisses me off.
Did you ever feel like a sell-out when commercial success hit?
That feeling started after Chashme Baddoor (2013) when similar things were offered. That was the time of sex comedies. People thought because I was good at comedy, I’d want to do those. I was like, ‘Over my f*****g grave’. I remember one filmmaker gave me a narration with such dirty jokes — stuff even two boys sitting together wouldn’t say — and offered me a great deal of money.
I went home and talked to my wife. She told me, ‘We have money for rent. You don’t have to do this. Don’t die every day on sets’. I’m so glad that phase of the industry is over.
How was the experience working on Peddi?
Going to Telugu cinema for Peddi gave me such a fresh feeling because I was the “new kid” again, trying to comprehend a new language and culture. I fell in love with filmmaking all over again. The director, Buchi Babu, treated me like a true artist. I’m even speaking Telugu in the film. It wasn’t easy; I had to mug up big lines. It’s a period film with a specific dialect, and Telugu doesn’t have many pauses, it’s quite breathless. I cracked it by giving the character a high-status lineage, which dictated a certain way of speaking.