Shahid Kapur with Kareena Kapoor in Chup Chup Ke

You are seen everywhere with Kareena off screen, and now you have two back-to-back releases with her on-screen. Don?t you fear an overkill?

It?s been two years since we had our last release together (Fida). While two of our films 36 China Town and Chup Chup Ke will release quite close to each other, our third release (Milenge Milenge) is not coming before next year. The good thing about 36 China Town and Chup Chup Ke is that our looks, songs and situations are very different in the two films. So, there is no chance of any confusion.

I always feel if it?s a good film, it will work and if it?s not, it won?t. Everything else becomes secondary. At the end of the day, the audiences want to see a good film, regardless of who is in it.

While you have done a thriller like 36 China Town before, Chup Chup Ke will be your first out-and-out comedy?

Yes, it will be fair to say that Chup Chup Ke is my first all-out comedy. While I did a comedy called Deewane Huye Paagal, I did not have a comic part in it. Also the fact that I am getting to work with the king of comedy, Priyadarshan.

Did you find doing comedy difficult?

See, you are playing a character in every film and the whole idea is to put it across to the audiences in a way that they will like. Now Priyadarshan comes up with these unique stories and he has his unique way of telling those stories.

His comedy comes out of the dilemmas that his characters go through and the situations they get themselves into. The comedy is not created through dialogues and other farcical plots. It is the situation which in itself is funny. So even if you have an extremely serious character crying, the audience may find it funny in the way it is handled. While directing he never asked us to act, he just asked us to be there. That was a completely new approach for me.

So what is your character all about?

I play this small-town guy who takes loans from everybody in the village. When all his business ventures fail and he goes totally bankrupt, he is stuck and suddenly fakes to be deaf and mute.

Then he gets to meet these two characters, played by Paresh Rawal and Rajpal Yadav, who have no money and are extremely troubled. They try their best to communicate with him, but in vain. Next he meets Kareena?s character, who is actually mute. And it becomes very interesting to see these two people communicate ? one acting deaf-and-mute and one actually mute.

You at least get to sing and dance in 36 China Town?

That is a very city-centric film while Chup Chup Ke is a small-town movie. So I feel I am very lucky that the two releases are so different from one another.

Despite everyone around being well aware of your romance with Kareena, why do you think Fida failed?

Fida didn?t work because it did not have a satisfactory ending. Every film may not have a happy ending but the audience should be satisfied. In the movie, I die at the end. So does Kareena. And the bad guy, played by Fardeen, he gets away. Now, an ending like this might have worked for a Hollywood film as a parallel form or a new approach. But our sensibilities are so different it could not be accepted here. We have had tragic endings like Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak in the essence of Romeo and Juliet but there it is satisfactory for the audience, as in the pair goes to heaven together. Basically, the audiences didn?t get what they wanted in Fida.

Are you going to give them that in these two releases?

To some extent, both 36 China Town and Chup Chup Ke have a romantic angle between Kareena and me. So, people will definitely get to see everything that they missed out in Fida.

Which other films do we see you in?

There?s Sooraj Barjatya?s Vivaah with Amrita Rao at the end of the year and there?s Ahmed Khan?s Fool and Final after that with Sunny Deol and Suniel Shetty.