A dark love story: Ek Villain

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Bollywood�s current heartthrob sidharth malhotra and starlet shraddha kapoor speak to city times about their different kind of love story in ek villain.

the director who loves to portray heartbroken couples in his movies is back on screen with a tragic romantic thriller ek villain. mohit suri once again directs the pain of two people in love who are not destined to be together no matter how much they want to be. next gen actors sidharth malhotra and shraddha kapoor are the leading pair of this film whose songs are already the hottest chartbusters in town.

fresh off the debacle of sajid khan directed humshakals ritesh deshmukh also plays a pivotal role in the movie - with reportedly negative shades.

shraddha and sidharth were in dubai on saturday to promote ek villain (organised by essar events) ahead of its release in the uae this weekend. “i wish i had one more day to explore dubai but we are running on an extremely tight schedule.” said shraddha.

while there has been a lot of speculation regarding the actual story line of the movie director mohit suri was quoted in a recent interview as saying it “revolves around a sweet girl-next-door with fire in her heart and an angry young man hell bent on setting the world on fire.” both sidharth and ritesh reportedly play negative roles casting a dark shadow over the movie while shraddha brings out the lighter moment in the film.

shraddha who plays a bike riding free-spirited character aisha in the movie says ek villain has left an indelible mark on her in more ways than one.

“i injured myself quite a few time while riding the bullet. the silencer burnt this side of part of my ankle” said shraddha showing us the burnt mark. “its my memory from ek villain. i have always wanted to learn how to ride a bike and when mohit called me and said “will you ride a bike for this film” i said “absolutely.” he said “do you know how to ride a bike”. i said “no but i will learn.” the thing is it is a very important part of my character aisha who is very free spirited. she loves to spread happiness and make other people’s dreams come true. she has travelled a lot and this bullet is like her best friend which she takes everywhere with her. the bullet is her companion. it goes with the character and her personality. obviously i had some trouble balancing it; at times sid (sidharth) would help me because he would sit behind me. he has got such long legs and i am just 5’5.”

on the last day of the shoot after giving the last take the spirited actress fell off the bike once she crossed the camera line. “i was not on the bike or i would have fallen with her or probably i would have saved her” says sidharth. “i was driving a car behind her so i was worried that i would run over her so i stopped. but hats off to her for learning to ride a bike for this film.”

sidharth who made his debut in bollywood as a chocolate hero in student of the year (2012) and followed it up with hasee toh phasee will be seen playing a character with great emotional angst in ek villain. while many may feel that it is too soon for the young actor to take on such a mature character the role was like therapy physically and emotionally for sidharth. we hear that he used to do push-ups before each take to get his adrenaline going.

the actor says he took out all his aggression and anger in this film by screaming and shouting. “i cannot find a person who is like my character. you do have to come up with something that is part fiction and something that you can relate to. all the anger that i had in twenty-nine years i took it out. nowadays i am finding that it is hard to get angry at anything. you have a director that gives you correct briefing and mohit is very clear so at times he used to let us be and see what happens instinctively. this is the kind of film that you cannot relate to in any way because all the characters are not close to what we are in real life. it takes a while to get into that world because i never had anyone like that in my life who had a violent past and would get so aggressive and scream and shout. all of us - me riteish mohit and shraddha took a while to get into the role.”

after giving a 100 crore monster surprise hit with aashiqui 2 (2013) shraddha kept in touch with director mohit suri. “i think the best thing that happened after aashiqui 2 was that mohit offered me ek villain. it is the biggest prize for me that he immediately offered me the film and had that faith to give me another challenging role like aisha which is completely different from aarohi (aashiqui 2). i really hope people enjoy this character; she is a very energetic and talkative character. someone you do not really meet very often.”

the actress had been requesting director mohit suri to let her sing since their last film together. when mohit finally relented the chirpy actress recorded the song in about two and a half hours. the song galliyaan is now on top of the charts and no matter where shraddha goes everybody wants to hear her sing.

“as an actor you can only choose whatever is offered to you so i have been lucky. now the promos of this film has worked; otherwise when i was doing hasee toh phasee (2014) and if i was to tell someone that i was doing a negative character who is always kicking screaming and shouting they’d be intrigued or maybe not really convinced. this is exactly why i am doing ek villain. people do not perceive me doing this kind of character with an aggressive shade. this is what i am doing out of the box and hope this brings in more different scripts and opens up a whole new opportunity.”

as for the future of bollywood sidharth says “i think it will be content driven. it will not be about one particular actor. once the audience comes out of the theatre they would want to have a nice story told. so yeah content comes first. now is the only time when a filmmaker has actors who are in their twenties thirties forties and fifties; which was never the case before. so you have so many interesting characters to cast and make the film you like.”

shraddha: sidharth is a good-looking boy and everybody knows that he is very handsome but i would say that he has a lot of honesty in his eyes. that’s my favourite feature about him.

sidharth: her zest for doing adventurous things. she will do scuba diving jump off the cliff ride a bike go mountain climbing - it is exciting and entertaining when you get a girl who is so enthusiastic in doing second takes even while doing action sequences.

sidharth: mogambo (amrish puri) from mr india pran sir ranjeet for his lecherous gaze and of course shraddha’s father shakti kapoor.

shraddha: my father shakti kapoor. especially the way he portrayed crime master gogo. it was iconic.