EXCLUSIVE Interview: Varun Dhawan & Janhvi Kapoor on Amazon Prime Video’s Bawaal

Nitesh Tiwari’s upcoming film Bawaal hints at certain parts of the story being set in an imaginary sequence during World War 2. The film stars Varun Dhawan as a history teacher and features Janhvi Kapoor alongside him. Since the release of the trailer, the audience has been discussing the use of Holocaust imagery in this romantic drama. In an interview with Firstpost, the actors open up about the film, the preparation for the role and more.

Bawaal has references of World War II, how do you deal with war within yourself?

Varun: Aagar maan ka hi toh achha hai, agaar maan ka na ho toh bhi accha hai. My mother keeps telling me this too whenever I face any failure and whenever things don’t happen the way I expected to be. I believe in this. I always believe that god has some better plans for me or he is trying to save me from something catastrophic.

Honestly if I say, there are some health hacks that I follow now like cold water plunge and that helps me in thinking and you learn to breathe differently with the cold water and that helps you to deal with the stressful situation.

Janhvi: I seek comfort and advice mainly from my dad and my family. But there are times that I sulk for three to four days and then I am okay.

How did the chemistry between you two happen on screen?

Janhvi: Off screen we trouble each other a lot. I think comfort level is also important. On paper the lines and dialogues were very clear and there was a lot of honesty in the words.

Varun: When I met Janhvi, I felt from the very beginning that she is a very funny person and most importantly an oddball type of person genuinely off screen. She does very funny things. When I got to know her, I realized that she is definitely one of a kind and that’s what makes her so special. When I first started shooting for Bawaal, I distanced myself from Janhvi because I myself was finding my own character. I am nothing like my character in Bawaal. But to play the character, there were these certain things that I tried and that helped me to play the character well.

For me it was like getting into the skin of the character and that was the most important part because the character is very different from who I am and I had to get into the rhythm. And Nitesh (sir) would enact them very well. The writing was so good that half the work became easy and to work with a writer-director is an advantage. While doing the film, it was about surrendering to Nitish’s vision. And he was there for rehearsals too. I had taken reference from Anil Kapoor’s acting and his mannerism in a lot of scenes in Bawaal.

Lesson learnt from Bawaal and how do you deal with social media users and audiences becoming critics in their own way?

Janhvi: I started doing worthwhile work with a lot of turmoil and complications, but the simplicity and clarity with which this film was made was very refreshing. I realised one doesn’t really need to be complicated or convoluted all the time. I guess I don’t see it to be a downside that audiences are changing, in fact it helps me understand their sentiments better.

Varun: My takeaway is that if you work with good writers and directors, your performance will automatically be good. If you do good work you are sorted. And most importantly fringe comments on social media doesn’t affect me. But again social media is a reality we need to admit that’s the nature of the beast.