Indian film and theatre actor Deepak Dobriyal, who shared the screen with Irrfan Khan in multiple films, recalled how the late actor changed his life.
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For the unversed, Deepak Dobriyal made his cinema debut with veteran filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj’s ‘Maqbool’, starring Irrfan Khan, and years later reunited with him on ‘Hindi Medium’ and ‘Angrezi Medium’.
In a new interview with an Indian media outlet, Dobriyal got candid on the impact that the late actor had on his career and overall life as he reminisced how their bond grew into friendship over the years, from their first meeting on the sets of ‘Maqbool’ to their final film together, before Irrfan passed away in April 2020, following complications in neuroendocrine cancer.
“It was a very emotional friendship. The best thing I learned from Irrfan Bhai was that he brought humour to every situation. Therefore, there was no situation in his life in which there was no humour. And I have the same attitude to life. But his humour was great. He brought humour everywhere,” Dobriyal began to remember.
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The ‘Tanu Weds Manu’ actor continued, “I still remember being in Vishal Bhardwaj Maqbool, I was his right hand. I signed this film because it is a film based on Shakespeare’s play. And the interesting thing was there was no monitor there. So whatever needed to be recorded was done in one take. And no actor would ask for a second take.”
“I was very happy to see his progress Maqbool to Hindi medium,” he added.
Dobriyal recalled the first day of shooting for ‘Hindi Medium’ when they were to shoot the climax scene and he came almost unprepared to face Irrfan, as the shooting schedule was preponed from the previously planned slate. “I was preparing for shooting. My character must have brought some gift [for Irrfan’s character]. So some production people rushed to get the flowers. They brought roses. I said, he’s a poor man. It doesn’t have the sensitivity like roses. I asked him to bring some bananas. Buy a dozen bananas. I had to shoot quickly. Then the shooting started.”
“I knocked on the door. Irrfan opened the door. That was the scene of my first day. I didn’t know what the dialogue would be. I didn’t know what the expression would be. I didn’t know what the journey would be like. All that happened there. The best part was that on the first day Irrfan and I were together, we laughed a lot. The entire unit laughed. it was fun. The shooting was so great on the first day that all the tension disappeared,” he remembered. “As soon as the shooting was over, we reached the hotel. And once we reached the hotel, Irrfan Bhai said, we enjoyed today’s scene very much. And he said, Deepak, let’s go swimming. And Irfan bhai and I went swimming. We were swimming at the hotel. We were eating food sitting on the grass. Our fun activities changed every day.”
“During the shooting of Hindi Medium, Irrfan Bhai said, ‘Don’t stop Deepak if he does this. Don’t stop him. He’s in perfect tune. And the movie needs this tune. So let him do it. He is in perfect tune’. So our tuning was very good,” Dobriyal explained. “And there was something else beautiful about Hindi Medium; when we talked about how my character Shyam Prakash would talk in a particular way. Irrfan bhai said no, don’t talk like that. You don’t enjoy that, Deepak. I said, Irrfan bhai, how? He told me not to talk to his, Irrfan Bhai’s character with so much affection. When an actor performs, a great actor helps him become even better. And whenever there was a problem in any scene, Irrfan Bhai would say, call Deepak. So he had this confidence in me.”
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“Whenever any of his friends would come, any writer or director from any field, he would include me in every meeting. So I’d come and we sit next to each other in the room. And I would sit and watch and listen. Then he would seek my opinion and say, what do you think? I would say, it’s like, let’s do this and make this. So he had a lot of confidence in me,” Dobriyal recalled.
The actor also mentioned that Irrfan did four films after ‘Hindi Medium’, and offered him a role in all of them, but he couldn’t accept the projects due to certain reasons and reunited with the late actor only on the next film in the series, ‘Angrezi Medium’.
