Vijay Varma On Preparing For His Role As A Cop In 'Kaalkoot': I Did A Lot Of Mental Math

Vijay Varma starrer 'Kaalkoot' premiered on Jio Cinema on July 27. Finally, Vijay has got to play the good guy in the crime drama. He plays the protagonist Ravi Shankar Tripathi who is a cop. Vijay pulls off his character with panache and flair and gets into the nuances of his role perfectly. Ahead of the release of the show, we had a freewheeling conversation with the actor where he spoke about preparing for his never-seen-before character. 

Vijay shared, "I did a lot of mental math. I sat with writer-director Sumit Saxena and we just brainstormed and all. We probably had more discussions than any other project I ever had. My directors would often complain that 'ye bohot discussion karta hain humare saath'. But this went all. Even Sumit is very collaborative. We wanted to kind of walk through the entire story properly when we were reading and I figured out what the character arc is. We covered as many issues as we could and we called out several things that are wrong in society.  We were very mindful of what we were doing. The script was fabulous in itself and I liked it."

He added, "I worked on the dialect, accent, the language that is specific to this particular reason that we have shown in the show. I did a lot of workshops for that and ya, I got to know a bit of cops' features and it was helpful. It was a rigorous shoot and very difficult at times because we were shooting in the summer and with limited resources. But it was all worth it because when you are passionate about your project, the passion is the main fuel."

When asked if he had any difficulty shooting a particular scene in 'Kaalkoot', Varma said, "In this particular show, there was a lot of single shots like a lot of one take of several things happening at the same time. Sometimes, you go on and on and on, on a single take, there are the movements from one place to the other, you are driving, you get off the bike, you talk to somebody, and you leave. So they were all one shot. Those were very interestingly choreographed and we had to do some rehearsals and we had to hit all the marks at the right time and everybody had to get it right. Those kinds of shots are there in the show and those shots start with the drone and it is going through a building and then seamlessly you will see the drone become the shot of two people talking to each other, walking to each other. We have tried techniques they were never tried before."

The 'Dahaad' actor also spoke about his never-seen-before role as he said, "That's the first novelty of seeing me in a new shade, new avatar. It's one of the most well-written crime and investigative dramas and we have humanised cops in a way that you will feel related. It talks about a lot of social issues but it does it with much intelligence and empathy that it will give you an essence of the world and the reality that we live in and we will probably understand why acid attack is a real problem and what can be done with it."

'Kaalkoot' also stars Shweta Tripathi, Seema Biswas, Yashpal Sharma and Gopal Dutt in pivotal roles.