Interview : Shiney Ahuja speaks!

Excerpts from an Interview:

Lately it was buzzed that you snipped off Akshay Kumar's role in Bhool Bhulaiyaa. Is that true?

Oh no! That's simply a joke. Actually, everybody wanted to know if Akshay had cut my role short and I got so fed up answering it umpteen times that I decided to play this gag. Akshay is like a brother to me. He can never snip my role nor otherwise. I got so exasperated telling this to people that I finally decided to play this joke. It wasn't anything serious at all.

Akshay Kumar has taken the lead in the promos. Doesn't that bother you anyway?

No, not at all. Akshay has been around in the industry for eighteen long years and it's completely justified if he takes the lead in the promos. I absolutely have no hassles about it.

That would be lovely. But Priyadarshan wanted my character to be sober and staid. The script required my character to be a little held back. Priyan Sir wanted me to deliver my dialogues in a particular fashion, and I tried to do it to the best of my efforts.

But yes, I get to do a comically twisted role in 'Har Pal'. Jahnu Barua, the director has given me the liberty to do things as I please and I'm simply overwhelmed by this. It's such a rare thing that a serious filmmaker like him understands all the knick-knacks of commercial film so intricately. The film is shaping out better than my expectations.

Your character in Life in a…Metro was really very disappointing as it moved out abruptly. Was that premeditated since there's talk of a sequel now?

Well, I know nothing about the sequel but yes, I too feel that my character in the film i.e. Akash was quite uneven. In real life, I know many such guys who are seen as big failures but in reality they consider themselves no less than kings.

Akash life was already down in the dumps when he met his love Shikha (Shilpa Shetty), a married woman. With no stirring lines to my credit, I didn't know how else to make that character romantically brimming.

Actually, I think otherwise. Khoya Khoya Chand is a very different film that needs attentive viewing to grasp its essence. I don't think it could be viewed while sending SMSes, answering phone calls or cracking jokes.

You will be seen in Mira Nair's Migration. Tell us about it.

Migration is a 10-minute film on AIDS. I signed it for an altruistic cause rather than commercial concern. Mira Nair is a terrific director and I'm hopeful we'll make an unabridged feature soon. Again I'm all keyed up about Hijack, a father-daughter story set against the conditions of a skyjack drama.

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