For someone who is at the helm of Tiger Zinda Hai, 2017’s last big-ticket film, director Ali Abbas Zafar looks very calm. “Naah! I am very nervous and there is just so much today,” Ali grins as we sit down to chat. t2 dropped in at Yash Raj Studios in Andheri in Mumbai to meet the

37-year-old filmmaker — who also directed Salman Khan in the superhit Sultan — just weeks before the spy-action thriller’s December 22 release. Tiger Zinda Hai is a sequel to the 2012 blockbuster Ek Tha Tiger. During the chat, Ali talks about what it takes to direct Salman and why he thinks Katrina Kaif’s potential as an actress is yet untapped.

What prompted the idea for Tiger Zinda Hai?

In June 2014, a group of Indian nurses was taken hostage in Iraq and the crisis went on for two weeks. I thought it was very interesting because it was not our chaos but suddenly, Indian citizens were in the middle of it. This was right after the Sultan script was ready and we were going back and forth on SK’s (Salman Khan) dates because he was finishing Bajrangi (Bhaijaan) and Prem Ratan (Dhan Payo). I wrote a completely fictional account of a mission that would be about bringing those nurses back, obviously with a lot of thrill and action. But Sultan was happening, so I got busy with that.

After the release of Sultan, Adi (Aditya Chopra, the film’s producer) asked me what I wanted to do. The script stayed with me so I told him I wanted make a film on this rescue mission. The story had an Indian and a Pakistani agent, so Adi suggested that it could be a Tiger sequel. I already had a rapport with Salman. And I thought it would be interesting to see these two agents on a mission where they act like agents and not lovers. For me, the first one was a romantic film where we see what went behind the creation of the best agents. Adi seemed hesitant, so I asked him for a week to rewrite the story with Tiger (Salman’s character) and Zoya (played by Katrina).

At the core, this story is similar to Akshay Kumar’s Airlift. Was that something that worried you at all?

Not at all. Akshay’s film was also an evacuation story, so the subjects are similar. But we make different kinds of love stories, so it’s as common as making a love story. It’s like Dangal and Sultan are both based on wrestling, but they are two different stories. So, my story is very different. Also, it’s been dealt with in a very different way, it’s more to do with the honour of the country and what Indian intelligence can do and pull off today with the kind of expertise we have.

You assisted Kabir Khan during New York and he made Ek Tha Tiger. Did you have a conversation with him about the sequel?

I definitely shared the story with him. Kabir made the first one and then he moved out of YRF. I didn’t know there was even a possibility of making a second one. When the idea came, I bounced it off him and he really liked it and that I was trying to take it in a different direction from the first one.

In TZH, we meet Tiger and Zoya eight years after the first film. Their lives are very different from how we had seen them the first time. Whatever they did then was for love but at different points in your life, your priorities change. This time, the priority is not romance, it’s much larger. So automatically, the characters evolve a bit.

This is your second film with Salman...

Yeah! We work well together. First of all, our relationship is not that of an actor and a director because he’s too senior. I’m like a younger brother on set with him. He respects the kinds of stories I want to do with him, and I respect his stardom and the way his audience wants to see it. I craft the characters to match his onscreen persona.
In Sultan, even when he was down and out, there was always this rage in his eyes. When you do a film with such a big star, as a director it is your responsibility to not let his stardom come in your way of making the film and yet, you have to respect it.

How do you do that?

You can stay true to your character, but the way you portray him in the film has to make his fans feel proud of  him. In Sultan, there is a scene when he’s let himself loose and he’s vulnerable and stands in front of a mirror which is a very ‘unlike Salman Khan’ scene because you see a very unfit Sultan. But in the same film, when he rises back and strikes iron again in the climax, he’s much fitter. If you can give his fans a new Salman Khan where his heroism as a superstar is intact —  they know that in the end he’s going to win — but he goes through lots of ups and downs and more human emotions, it makes the film more real.

Even in Tiger (Zinda Hai), he’s very human. He’s not a superhero — he has setbacks, he is emotional, he has a human side, when he gets hit he feels that pain. But when he comes out with that big gun, raging, firing 10,000 rounds in five minutes, his fans will go, ‘Wow, that’s the Salman Khan we’ve come to watch’. You have to balance those two sides in the film.

This is your second film with Katrina, and this is so different from the work you guys did in Mere Brother Ki Dulhan…
That was my first film. I was really new, she was a big star, the film did really well and her work was recognised. The thing that I find with Katrina and it’s true for most actors — when you’re very comfortable with the person behind the camera and know that he is not judging you, you already become better in front of the camera, because you get that extra confidence from that man.

I just feel that Katrina is one of the most underused actresses — she’s done great dances and all that, but very few people have actually tried to tap her as an actress. I tried to do it in Mere Brother Ki Dulhan and it worked. I gave her a character that was close to her identity — a girl raised in London, little more boho in the way she looks at society in India and all that. In Tiger, she comes in with a very solid point of view about where she comes from, what she believes, how she would contribute to a mission this big. And I think she’s done a phenomenal job. She’s also gone through highs and lows in her career, and I think her maturity as an actor has really grown from when I worked with her last. As an actor, the more experience you have in your personal life, it begins to reflect in your work. I’ve known her for 10 years and she’s been one of my closest friends... and in this film I think she’s really worked hard on her character.

Both your lead actors are coming off films that haven’t done well at the box office. You’re at the helm of a film as big as Tiger Zinda Hai. Does that put more pressure on you?

It definitely puts pressure, but not because their last films were not big blockbusters. It’s just that this is a big-budget film and I’m answerable to my producer. My last film with Salman was a big hit and people liked him, so all those are additional pressures. But success and failure are part of our profession and one can’t take it too seriously. We just need to make the best film we can and I’m very happy with the way this film has shaped up.

Karishma Upadhyay