Monsoons in Mumbai are gorgeous, but it’s also the season for flu and John Abraham was forced to miss multiple days of Dishoom promotions because of a bout of viral fever. When I met him on his first day back, in a suite at the JW Marriott in Juhu, I had to ask how he was feeling. “I am fantastic! I had fever until last night, but I worked out this morning. The only way to fight fever is with muscle. So, I just work out when I am sick. I told my trainer that I can feel the fever leaving my body and he totally understood what I meant. If someone was listening to our conversation, they’d think we are both mad!” he says with a laugh.

Working out is your cure for everything in life?

Oh ya! I hit the gym if I am depressed, happy, unwell… anything. It’s either working out or riding my bike. I am a very physical person, so I need to be doing something all the time.

When we spoke a few months ago, you had mentioned that you wanted to go to LA to study fitness. What happened to those plans?

They are still in place. I was meant to go in August, but now I will go in September. We have a whole schedule of Force 2 in the first week of September, so I’ll finish that and then go. There is a lot that I am planning to do on the fitness front and LA being the fitness capital of the world is the perfect destination for me. I want to go explore ideas there.

So what are your plans in the fitness sector?

It’s a little premature for me to share the details of what I have in mind. I don’t want to say that I am opening a gym or doing fitness videos because those are quite predictable. I want to look at fitness holistically. So if I do enter the industry, I will have a business that will be sustainable over a period of time. Most of us as actors, when we attach our names to a product or a brand, we mostly fail. This is why I have mostly steered clear of doing that. We don’t know
how to sustain the business because we end up with wrong advisers. We end up relying on our managers or agents, which is not the smartest thing to do.

In my case, I am fortunate to have Dr Sanjay Sood, who is the professor of marketing at the UCLA School of Management, helping us out. He is going to spend six months every year to help me set up systems in business.

Let’s talk about Dishoom. What was a bigger draw for you — a chance to work with Rohit Dhawan after Desi Boyz or the script?

Both. I would never refuse a film from Rohit. Even if he came up with a film that’s really out there, I’d work with him. I have known Rohit since I worked with his father (David Dhawan) on a film called Hook Ya Crook, which never released. Rohit was an AD (assistant director) on the film. I want to work with him forever. Thankfully, both the script and my character in Dishoom are fantastic.

And Varun and you have quite a bromance going. What is your earliest memory of him?

While we were making Hook Ya Crook, David showed me a photograph of Varun. He said: ‘This is my younger son. He is in London and he has a six-pack!’ (Laughs) Varun had long hair then. David had said that he’ll get Varun into films.
Then when we were making Desi Boyz, I met Varun in London. So when Dishoom happened, there was no effort to ‘create a chemistry’. It just happened.

My relationship with Varun is very beautiful. Varun’s done a few two-hero films before so when we worked together, he realised the difference. I have always seen filmmaking as a collaborative effort. I am not going to compete with my co-actor for better punchlines! For example, when I was unwell, I wasn’t worried because I knew Varun would pick up the slack during promotions.

The last time we had spoken, you had mentioned Dishoom in the same breath as Bad Boys, Lethal Weapon and Rush Hour and predicted that this would become a franchise. What is it about the film that gives you that confidence?

More than confidence, it is the only franchise-able film outside of Force. Dishoom is a buddy-cop film that has happened after a long time and these two characters can go on their next mission after this one. Dishoom is also a young film because of Varun. As for Force, what Die Hard is to Bruce Willis, Transporter is to Jason Statham and Rocky is to (Sylvester) Stallone, I want Force to be for me. Force 2 has reference to a lot of real-life instances, so we want to build credibility around the series.

Your last film Rocky Handsome was one that you were really proud of and it didn’t work at the box office because the audience rejected excessive blood and gore. Does that make you rethink?

Very good question. To begin with, we were remaking a Korean film that was way darker. Also, when the censor board gave it an adult certificate, my director (Nishikant Kamat) put all the edited portions back into the film, which made it very gory. The way it was edited earlier, it was a far more universal film, but we still got an A-certificate so Nishi just put all the effects and the blood back in.

I am disappointed with the fact that Rocky Handsome didn’t do well. In retrospect, you don’t release a film when there’s a T20 World Cup happening and there’s an India-Australia match! 

But more than the timing, it was the gore that the audience had a problem with...

Ya, and that’s an area that I am normally very careful about. But like I said, in this case, it was my director who decided to add all the chops, blood and sound effects back. I will make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.

(At this point during the interview, John’s sprawled on the chair, with his fingers interlocked behind his head. It’s impossible to not notice the massive boulders of his biceps flexing in the sleeves of his grey T-shirt)

This is the biggest I have ever seen you!

Naaah! Hardly. I am currently 94-95kg.

I meant the biceps!

Ah! The strange part about my body is that my biceps and quadriceps are really large. So I always wear clothes one size larger. This is because I don’t do light-weight anymore. Instead, I lift my body weight. I do a lot of crossfit, strength training and TRX. The idea is to look aesthetic. Even the scene in Dishoom where Varun and I are standing…

Yes, in underwear!

(Laughs) Yes, the idea is not to look sleazy. We don’t look like two super-oiled body builders.

It’s been a while since we last saw you in chaddis...

(Laughs) The last was in Dostana...which was almost eight years ago. And I have only gotten better. I think I look 70-80 per cent better than I did in Dostana. The definition and the quality of my muscles show that I have worked very hard on myself. I still see faults in my body. I would have liked to be at six per cent fat count but I was only at eight per cent. I told Rohit that I could see a bit of fat and he said I was psycho! (Laughs)

You have to agree with Rohit. You are psychotic when it comes to your body! 

Ya… I am anal. I trained Varun for that scene. Varun tells everyone very fondly that I used to tell him that he has to stand next to me in that scene, so he has to look really good! (Laughs) I think we fooled him into wearing a looser underwear. And he was like: ‘Bhaiya bhaiya….!’

 

 

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