As filmmaker Meghna Gulzar returns to the 1971 Indo-Pak military conflict, with Sam Bahadur (2024) after the smash hit Raazi (2018), the spotlight shifts from a brave young woman who played an incredible spy to a courageous soldier who attained outstanding successes as an army general.
The actor who plays the legendary Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw on screen said that he had a natural affinity for such characters. Vicky Kaushal, still most famous among all Bollywood aficionados for his “How’s the josh?” line of dialogue from the military drama Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), said, “I do get drawn to films that depict stories of the real heroes of our motherland and our history.”
While he played a Pakistani national born into a military family in Raazi, Vicky has poured his heart and soul into portraying Manekshaw, a proud Indian and Chief of the Army Staff of the Indian Army in 1971. The 2024 film takes its title from the name — “Sam Bahadur” — by which a soldier of the 8 Gorkha Rifles addressed the general in 1969.
“For Sam Bahadur, there was a lot of research that went behind [the role]. In Uri [The Surgical Strike], the preparation was more physical because it was an operation-based film,” said Vicky during a recent promotion of his new film in Kolkata, eastern India.
“In Sam Bahadur, the film is about an official [who rises] from Second Lieutenant to Field Marshal. He has played every rank in the [Indian] Army. So an actor needed to know the duties in every rank, what kind of life he had, since it is a biopic. So I had to research his way of walking and talking, which I had to stick to,” said Vicky.
The first step in this research and prep work for the film was to make the actor Vicky Kaushal disappear and let the soldier Sam Manekshaw emerge.
“When I watched the interviews of Sam sir, I realised no one could see me when I was trying to perform, because he had a different way of walking and talking. Of course, his inherent swag and charisma were so unique, special, and rare that we had to literally get that heart of Sam right,” said the actor.
“For that, I had to empty my own vessel and start from scratch. It was like a complete blank page.”
There was a lot of reading involved in the prep. “We watched his interviews, read books on him and met his family members. Meghna [Gulzar] had done some incredible research for years by the time I was on board. So we sat together and kept jamming regularly for five-six hours before starting the shoot,” added the actor.
It helped, of course, that Vicky was always attracted to the human stories of heroic figures, and wanted to be a part of that storytelling through cinema. “It is very important to educate — along with entertainment — the youth of today’s generation about the heroes who worked for the country and how their contributions are helping us to reap benefits now. Those stories draw me as an audience [member] as well as an artiste.” He felt that “there is some kind of [a] magnetic energy which pulls me to those scripts as well”.
One of the best things about playing these roles is that the preparation helps the actor go deeper into the lives of those he already admires. “I do enjoy living those lives, because I get to know more about those lives and learn [about them] as human beings as well,” he said during the promotional interview.
“It was not a conscious decision to portray such roles, but such stories are too amazing to let go [of], even if they turn out to be repetitive in terms of my career. I don’t mind doing ten more Army films if the stories are good and they are made with the right intention and integrity,” said Vicky.
The actor had full faith in his Sam Bahadur director when he signed up, because since Raazi, he and Meghna developed “a very organic trust in each other”.
“I was so happy that it was Meghna who was making this film, holding my hand and taking me through this journey of becoming Sam, because it would have taken a person only like Meghna, who is so meticulous and proper about everything, to get things right in the film,” he said.
“[Meghna] is somebody whom I blindly trust, and I have a lot of love and respect for her as a human being, filmmaker and everything she does. Whatever she does, she does it with a lot of dignity, integrity, and sincerity, especially when it comes to the Armed forces,” he said.
When first discussing this film, Vicky came to believe that Meghna “was in love” with Sam Manekshaw — the man and his life. This “realisation of her love and obsession with Sam Manekshaw” made the actor put his “best foot forward”, because he knew that “she would not be satisfied with anything less than perfect”.
— This interview has been published under a content sharing arrangement with India Blooms News Service. The original interview was published by IBNS.