He’s made a mark as the young man on the edge in Shaitan, the hateful boyfriend in Hate Story and a brother with murder and revenge on his mind in Ram-Leela. This Friday, Gulshan Devaiah goes below the belt to be the boy-next-door with an insatiable appetite for sex. A t2 chat with our desi Christian Grey! 

The promo of Hunterrr created a stir when it hit airwaves in January. What’s the kind of feedback coming your way?

The feedback is generally very positive. There’s a lot of excitement to watch the film. There is a small percentage of the audience that will look at it in a narrow way and say that it objectifies women and all that, but my character Mandar never looks at women in a disrespectful manner. All the sex that he has in the film is consensual. It’s not a sex comedy… it’s a comedy about a guy who likes having a lot of sex — in local Mumbai parlance, he engages in a lot of vaasugiri — but then, he falls in love. Then arises the dilemma of what he should pay heed to — his love for this woman or his insatiable appetite for sex. 

The response is really great… we hit a million views for the trailer on YouTube within the first few days that goes to show that a lot of people are showing interest for a content-driven film. Hopefully that will translate into some kind of box-office success. 

You might get offended if we ask you if you identify with Mandar, but how on earth does one play a sex addict?

(Laughs out loud) I do identify with Mandar, at a level that every man would identify with. I am saying ‘man’ because our story is from the point of view of a man, but vaasugiri can apply even to a woman. Men have fantasies, all the time ya (laughs)… especially when you are 12 or13… you are hitting puberty and your body is going through changes and you notice a few things about yourself… you wake up to a wet blanket one day and you don’t know what’s happening. This is a story of Mandar’s journey from that phase of innocence when you first discover yourself and then the opposite sex….
When I was 14-15, even I had a lot of fantasies and a lot of us don’t do anything about those fantasies… but Mandar does. He tries to live out his fantasies. He’s not the most courageous man… which, also, I could relate to (laughs), but he tries to overcome it and a lot of times he succeeds. And then his experience comes in handy. He isn’t a dashing guy… he has to work very hard to get a woman’s attention. He’s as average as average can be. So ya, it wasn’t difficult to relate to Mandar. Most men don’t get attention from women that easily (laughs). 

Were there any reel or real references to play Mandar?

Not really… most of it was my imagination. That there was relatability on some level also helped. I approached it thinking it was like an Amol Palekar film… an Everyman kind of film. Very middle-class space with real wants and needs and where nothing is in a hyper-real, commercial space. I am your boy-next-door and that helps to build intrigue among the audience: ‘How can a man who looks like this lead such a colourful life?’ It was about going back to my teenage days… thinking of all the confusion and angst that I felt about sex and sexuality then. And then, as I said, there was my imagination because as they say, most of acting is actually about having an imagination.

What was the toughest bit of playing a sex addict?

The intimate scenes were a little tough. While doing those scenes you have to trust each other and especially in a film like this which is set in the real space, you can’t have inhibitions that would seem out of place. Of course, there is a boundary that you can’t cross because we weren’t making a porn film. With Radhika (Apte), I wasn’t really apprehensive because I have known her for long and that comfort translated into chemistry. But with Sai (Tamhankar) and the other girls, I was working with for the first time and it was important that I made them feel comfortable. I had to make sure that my touch wasn’t misinterpreted. But thankfully, they all understood that it’s a professional set-up and I am a professional actor… they also made me comfortable in turn. 

So your wife will continue talking to you after the film releases?

(Laughs) Of course! She’s (Kalliroi Tziafeta) an actress too and understands how all this works. She even helps me, sometimes. Hunterrr is not the first film in which I have done intimate scenes… I did them in Hate Story (with Paoli Dam) and I remember I had no idea how to have sex on screen! (Laughs) I thought I would embarrass myself, if you know what I mean. She (Kalliroi) helped me to get comfortable, explaining how I should approach those scenes. We have a very creative atmosphere at home… my wife is a far more professionally qualified actor than I am. My wife’s watched Hunterrr thrice already and she’s loved it… she thinks I am cute in the film! (Laughs) 

You recently tweeted: #Hunterrr does not glorify the pursuit of carnal pleasures nor does it objectify women. It’s a coming (no pun intended) of age film’.

Was that a message for the censor board?

(Laughs) As I told you, there is a small section of the audience that is misinterpreting the film. I came across an American woman who doesn’t understand Hindi... she saw the poster and she somehow connected the film to the atmosphere of rapes in India for some reason. I didn’t want to pick a fight with her and I explained to her what the film is about and I thought it’s better I put out that tweet for others like her who are looking to misunderstand the theme of the film. 

When you talk about censorship, I don’t think it’s the darkest days for us yet, because sometime in the ’70s, a play called Sakharam Binder was banned and its playwright Vijay Tendulkar was ostracised and hounded publicly. He had to face legal action as well as moral policing and his family was hounded. To be honest, none of us are having to face all of that now. What we are facing now is definitely not the worst. See, there will always be differences of opinion… people are never going to agree on this. Filmmakers will say that their freedom is being curbed, but the censor board has a job to do and they have decided this is how they will do it. It’s up to us to now decide how we want to counter this — some people will fight it, some people will work around it.

Was a big reason to do Hunterrr the need to break the stereotype of the serious guy?

Yes, absolutely. I always believe that I can do more. I don’t hold it against filmmakers for slotting because I believe it’s convenient to put people into slots. I have been doing theatre for a long time… I have done all kinds of plays… from Badal Sircar to Arun Mukherjee to Vijay Tendulkar to Shakespeare… and I have reason to believe that I am quite versatile. So in films, I look for opportunities that I can stretch my wings and show a little bit more of what I am capable of. Even my next few films… Cabaret, Love Affair… have me playing roles you wouldn’t have seen before. So with every role, the effort is to push a little bit of the envelope. 

I came into films because I loved what Ram Gopal Varma did with Satya and Company… he opened a whole new genre and a whole new audience. And now, you have many more filmmakers doing that. I am happy I am an actor at a time when I can make a place for myself and be a sort of ‘character leading man’ and not a drop-dead gorgeous hero, because I can’t do that. I have tried to… and failed miserably (laughs). I look so stupid trying to be the ‘hero’.

Priyanka Roy
Will you watch/ not watch Hunterrr? Tell t2@abp.in