Tahir Raj Bhasin. Picture: Joy Datta

It’s been a great, great time… the best two weeks of my life,” are Tahir Raj Bhasin’s first words to t2. The Delhi boy has become the talking point of Bollywood after his menacing portrayal of drug-and-prostitution kingpin Karan Rastogi, aka Walt, in Rani Mukerji’s box-office winner Mardaani. We caught up with the 27-year-old looker whose female fan following has hit the roof.

Everyone who has watched Mardaani is talking about Tahir Raj Bhasin…

It’s been very overwhelming, to be honest. It took a while to sink in, actually. The first week was just a haze of this incredible feedback from both critics and the audience. I am very happy and very grateful.

While making the film, did you ever think that the audience would take so much to a negative character like Walt?

I was very, very apprehensive. I wasn’t sure how that aspect would be taken, especially by girls in the audience. But I was really taken aback when people would come up to me after a show and say: ‘We hated your character, but there was something about him and your performance that we also loved’. It was great to know that people were able to differentiate the character from the actor.

When I read the script, what struck me was that the character of Walt (Karan Rastogi likes to call himself that after Walter White of TV series Breaking Bad) had a definite graph… there were highs and lows in his character arc. So though there was so much negativity in Walt, I also knew that there was also a level of relatability. There is loss in his life… there is an emotional side to him sometimes. He is an anti-hero, but there is something about him that will remain in the mind of the viewer. I found him appealing and I knew that the audience would like him too, on some level or the other.

How tough was it to get into the mindspace of someone who seems to have no redeeming qualities?

It was tough, definitely. He’s so far removed from who I am or anyone I have ever met in life. It started off just by reading the statistics of trafficking cases in our country and that, in itself, was such a shock. I remember when I first read the script, it was so dark that it put me into thought for a day whether I would be able to do justice to a character like that. We visited red-light areas and spent a lot of time in those surroundings. The basic idea was to understand that there are people who operate in this kind of a world and for them, it’s just business. As Tahir, I was like, ‘My god, such people should be lynched’, but the moment I became Walt, I treated it like work… I deal in drugs, I run a prostitution racket and this is what I do to earn my bread. That was the toughest part… to be detached morally and ethically and just get into the skin of the character.

Your confidence on screen has been singled out for praise. Were there any instances where you felt intimidated?

The toughest scene for me was the one in which I come face-to-face with Shivani Shivaji Roy for the first time. She’s lying all bound and gagged on the floor of my room and it was tough for me to do that scene because that was the first time Rani and I had met on set. We had interacted earlier, but never met on set because our characters are talking over phone for most of the film. The scene was that my character had to intimidate hers and here I was trying to get over my own fear of being intimidated by an experienced actor like her (laughs). That’s what made the scene very tough… and also very interesting.

Aamir Khan’s tweet in praise of your performance apparently didn’t let you sleep all night!

(Laughs) Yes, yes. It was just such a huge high for me to read that tweet. I met him at YRF Studios and he told me that I was a lot of fun to watch.... The general feedback from the industry has been that people are surprised that I chose such a role to break out. Everyone has said that they liked that I wasn’t trying to be evil… it was the casualness in body language and attitude that made him more menacing. He could just be the boy next door, but with a twisted mind (laughs).

Post-Mardaani, your female fan following has been growing by the hour...

(Laughs) There’s been a ton of feedback… girls and women have told me that they are watching the film a second and a third time because of me! I was at a screening in Delhi with my friends and family and there were girls in the age group of 18 to 26 and I thought that I would have to make an exit from the back door because of what a low-life my character is, but someone spotted me and there was this whole surge of people coming towards me and praising me.

Yash Raj Films has taken you under its wing… that’s big.

Yes, it was a big day for me. The hardest thing for a debutant to decide is: ‘What are my next choices and who are the people I work with next’. Mentoring is very critical at the stage I am in and I couldn’t have asked for a better hand to hold than YRF.

You’ve started off with such an unconventional role. Will that be the blueprint your career will follow because we just can’t picture you as a conventional romantic lead…

(Laughs) I am blessed with the kind of looks that if the script and the styling is right, there is a range of characters I could play. It takes a little time for things to move in the industry, but the way appreciation has come in, I am confident that I will be given roles that have a certain dimension to them. Walt is dark, but he has respect for his mother and he breaks down at the death of a business associate. There’s also a semblance of a family in his life. There are layers to him and that’s what I will look for in every character I play… a romantic guy, a negative character, an action role….

You just said that things take a while to move in Bollywood. You had to struggle for years for your big break. What would your advice be to freshers looking to getting a foothold in films?

You just need blind conviction to brave all odds. Everyone comes in with family support, but here there will be so many people doubting you. In that storm of doubt, you have to be your own rock. The minute you stop aspiring, you will break down. I spent four years in Bombay just looking for that break. I had to fake it till I made it… there would be times when I have had relatives asking me what’s happening in my career and I would have to lie and say that a lot was going on, when there was actually nothing! (Laughs) Now when they ask me, I can tell them that a lot is going on… truthfully.

Priyanka Roy
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