A bit philosopher prince and a bit academic, but most importantly, a positive soul open to taking the good and bad on his karmic terms. In conversation with Rinku Ghosh, Saif Ali Khan maps his life, career and his increasing rootedness to the house of Pataudi

Clad in denims, with a slicked pony tail, the big glasses and beard, actor Saif Ali Khan wants some bananas before he gets around to talking to us at length. He doesn’t want to slag in between. He loves conversations rather than structured interviews and particularly hates the five-minute byte droplets to a wide-ranging media for his film promotions. So he asks everybody to keep it silent, not crowd around his space or distract his eyeline. That’s how meticulous he is about speaking his mind and articulating his thoughts. Shows how much of his being he invests in bringing his characters alive. Yet when he settles down to his eloquent self, he becomes disarmingly chatty, engaging with and involving you in the process.

What is with this new hairdo and bearded look... does it have to do with your newer projects?

Kind of; I’m doing a couple of films and prepping for them. I’m doing Ajay Devgan’s Tanaji and the second edition of Sacred Games. I’m not supposed to say it but we are starting the latter soon. This look is for those two. Then there’s Navdeep Singh’s The Bounty Hunter where I play a Naga sadhu and where I have to wear an extended beard that will be attached to this one. It’s not this look though; this is my polite version. They’re all historical films where a lot of make-up is involved. In a nice way, actors can look different for their roles and shouldn’t be judged by their present appearance. We have to wait to see how the character turns out.

What was your reference point for Baazaar? Was there a Hollywood derivative or did Harshad Mehta lurk somewhere in the background?

This one is not a biopic but more of a commercial film and a classy one too. I’m really surprised by Gauravv (Chawla) for having made one with this kind of pace and style. Some stories are about themes, like good and bad, positing of ideas but this one is layered in an interesting manner. But to answer your question about derivatives, a lot in India, including the jeans and the ponytail, are inspired by the West. The idea of making a movie on the money market could be inspired from Wall Street. We’d be lying if we said we’re not influenced by precedents. But the trick lies in understanding and adapting them for the Indian context.

We must understand that there’s a strong culture of business and enterprise in India and interesting characters in the subset we call the Gujarati businessman. You’d be well served to look at those. I have been involved from the early stages with Nikhil (filmmaker producer Nikhil Advani) in etching out this character. I wanted to do a performance-oriented role and was contemplating an overweight, balding, crude, Paan Parag-chewing Gujarati businessman. But that was more about perception and since the film was commercial, we thought that we should make him really cool, suave and well-dressed. But it sounded too much like a Siyaram ad or Race or something like that.

Then we thought let’s make him realistic. We looked at business magazines and scanned interviews to analyse the stock marketer of an aspirant India, his attitude, hair, his manner of speech, and shaped the idea of him. So this is the most interesting job I’ve had in a long, long time. The scope a commercial drama can give you is huge. On top of that, if you’re artistic about it and try to make it believable by getting the walk and clothes right, then you can draw in the viewer. I even decided to be age-appropriate, put a little white in the hair. And I worked on getting the accent just right because I didn’t want to sound overtly Gujarati. If you go to Ahmedabad to address a function, nobody expects you to say kem cho to the crowd. It’s boring to say that. So these little touches have delicately shaped the contours of the character. Our director is very interesting. Senior directors didn’t take him seriously because he did not want to make something decidedly artsy. He’s jumping in the deep end but I think he has made a really good film.

Do you research as much for all your roles?

Thankfully these days you’re getting an opportunity to come up with something that keeps you invested and enriches your mind as an actor. Given the explosion of consumable media platforms, we actors have to make the shift of filling out the characters we play convincingly instead of treating them as a job that must be finished within a schedule or subscribing them to the larger-than-life aura. Sanjay Dutt once asked me in the 90s, “Are you shooting everyday yet?” Meaning that is the sign of success.

Today it’s a different dynamic at play. Are you able to totally immerse yourself into the role and not vice versa? I have that confidence and luxury because I am not doing anything else when I am in an immersive experience. For example, if you’re doing a Naga sadhu, ideally you should look like a stick. Become that guy. Sometimes you can do it, sometimes you can’t. That’s the aim, I want to totally become that guy for a while without being crazy about it. Time, like loyalty, shouldn’t be spent on wrong things. It’s a waste but sometimes it’s good enough that you have given your heart and soul. But it has to be heart and soul given to the right idea.

You came with this temperament much ahead of your time with your earlier films like Ek Hasina Thi and then Being Cyrus. You did play self-effacing characters, had completely wiped off the stardust…

My ideal was Johnny Depp and to become an actor who was commercially successful. My mother has all along in her career encouraged a different kind of good cinema. Something more pleasing in terms of commercial bottomlines. But truth be told, except for those pyrrhic moments in my early career graph, I feel more like an actor now than ever before. Sure, I was more successful but I wasn’t enjoying my roles. I could do them but that’s about it. I am an actor by profession and one has to earn in the end.

There was also the trough you dealt with following disasters like Humshakals, Happy Ending and some more conflicted rom com heroes in between. Then Saif, the actor, was back with Sartaj in the digital series Sacred Games. How did you deal with this phase and holding your own? Would you have done Sacred Games had you been successful in films?

Quite honestly, at one point, I wanted to make some money. And I took my eye off the ball for a bit. Markets also have ups and downs. Somebody must have offered me a crazy figure and I said, “Okay, I’ll take care of my life with this.” And I made a bit of a gamble by doing films like Humshakals, Bullett Raja, and Happy Ending. Looking back, it was not such a crazy move because these directors had made hits with other people and peers. Maybe something in our stars didn’t align, but I had received a lot of money from the market. So I took this decision to give it all back and it made my wife very nervous. Everyone around me became nervous. I was like “I don’t know how” but I gave it all back and it was a lot. I thought to myself, I couldn’t be stuck in this or I would be dead. I returned it all and decided to work with the best directors in the business.

And I’m going to try and do the best work I can. Doing a Rangoon, Chef and Kaalakaandi was, therefore, satisfying because people watched me, although they didn’t do great business. Specially, parts of the Press said: “There’s a new kind of actor in him.” That people could see it encouraged me. Even my mother, whom I talk with about such things but rarely, told me that people were appreciating my roles. Taking it forward, I am in the process of becoming a better and better actor, including Baazaar and Sacred Games. I kept reading, learning, and seeing the possibility in the treatment of these roles. As for the size of screen — big, small, or palm — it can never affect my choices as an actor, so long as the subject allows me to sink in. I will go wherever there is excitement. And the digital platform allows you to tell stories freely, without censorship and talk about contemporary India, which is but taboo in the mainstream space, be it of queer rights or the canvas of the Babri Masjid.

Sacred Games, particularly, left a mark because Sartaj is very understated and you had to bring out his conflict and flawed nature with cogent expressions.

I am glad people liked it. In fact, the Sartaj in the book is even more complex than the Sartaj on screen because he has to be placed in the context of gangster Gaitonde and, therefore, cannot be seen indulging in too many frailties. I hope Sacred Games brings about a new chapter in Indian cinema. I feel lucky that this series did not allow me to get slotted in some jaded acting style. I have worked with a lot of new people and have learnt a lot from and grown with them. That’s the biggest takeaway.

I understood the vision of a brilliant guy like Vikramaditya Motwane, who was taut during the shoot and never allowed me to slip or add unnecessary frills.

Was your production house, Illuminati Films, also an attempt to give back to the industry?

For that I have to thank Eros and Kishore Lulla, who have a ridiculous amount of ambition and money in the movie industry. He kind of empowered a lot of us by questioning the status quo of the producer. He asked us, “Why don’t you guys produce?” There are certain prime movers in the film industry, somebody is a director, somebody an actor. They all can have a brilliant mind but all too often they can just be a facilitator. We can do without the facilitator but cannot do without the brilliant producer. “So why don’t you become an independent producer,” he asked me and must say we did quite well. Suddenly, this arcane business, that is supposed to be impossible for artists to do, became not that difficult. It’s a propaganda that suits the producer as well. So we formed a company, made Love Aaj Kal and Cocktail. Suddenly, we were making films that we enjoyed. So the main reason for it was to protect myself and to do films that I cared about, to have a little team who would be writing fresh material, which somewhere got lost along the way. Now I have formed a company to do that again with renewed focus. It’s called Black Knight.

What is with you and the Templars; you named your first production house Illuminati and now Black Knight?

I just loved the idea of them ever since I was a kid, reading about Crusader castles, forts and their campaigns. That history fascinated me. Black Knight, though, is not just Arthurian but also the first rock and roll song I heard when I went to school in England. I remembered Deep Purple singing Black Knight, instantly fell in love with the tune and started playing the guitar because of it. So it’s a name that connects with me and what I am.

Do you still play the guitar?

I do play it now but not as much as I used to. It has taken a backseat, but I can still play it well enough. I haven’t been on stage for a long time. I really should carry on.

What will be Black Knight’s focus, considering there is now a content surge? Are we telling enough Indian stories or accessing our literature enough?

I think we are telling a lot of Indian stories now, be it a Sui Dhaaga or Badhaai Ho. More stories are going to happen, have to happen because we are a greater literary nation though half of us don’t even realise this fundamental truth. With this whole rush of nationalism and modernism, we forget that we are actually an ancient civilisation and everyone should be remembered, from our originators, to Alexander and the Mughals to everyone who has come here. It’s all there and I’m sure we’ll find the stories in our history. Our epics have immense potential and I hope somebody will make a web series about the Ramayana or Mahabharat, perfect for a 10-20 part Netflix series with their layers of complexity and dynamism.

I also feel that we have not quite explored the world of Rabindranath Tagore enough except Satyajit Ray. His short stories have immense potential, which we have not even touched. I can safely say that the industry is in the middle of a renaissance after the downfall of the 80s, 90s, and even the early 2000s. We are a dramatic culture in the sense that we have always loved drama, writing, story-telling, and acting, and we’re a literary culture. I can feel the resurgence.

How are you going to fit yourself into it?

I have so many ideas in production. Let’s do the story of Aurangzeb, his contradictions, conflicts, inner world.

I would love to do a film about a lawyer. There are tonnes of stories that we could do for the web and cinema. I am buzzing with ideas about what to make and hopefully will get there.

At one level, we are a digitally saturated and informed society. Yet there is also a rise in conservatism and rigidities. What is your take on these extreme polarities?

I think we are a schizophrenic culture in the sense that some things are medieval and some things are modern and both are pulling us in different directions. But it’s quite amazing how it’s all moving forward too through the churn. I think in terms of stories, we’re trying to connect nationalism with religion, trying to say this is how it was. Who knows how it was? Because nobody was around. We’re actually quite disconnected because of social media. The digital world doesn’t help, you feel you’re connected but it’s a bit of an illusion. ‘Likes’ are more important to you than what you like and are isolating people from their own feelings. It’s more of information dissemination than education. I think more and more education will also become the realm of the person who’s willing to work hard for the knowledge. Like there will be a surface story alright. But to know the truth, you have to go deeper to realise that this is not what it seems.

As for the polarities, it could be that modernity is causing that issue with some people because they are feeling a little displaced by its homogeneous uniformity. Like when people suddenly start wearing blue jeans driven by the West, they feel they are losing their native identities and suddenly get very rigid with their rules. I can only recall Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God, who has articulated how religious fundamentalism is not just a response to, but a product of contemporary culture. Anyway, I think that is what it is.

Transiting the industry from 1991, how would you map your journey?

I have had some fake spikes and bursts of creativity. Omkara was obviously the high point, the rom-com years were kind of fun. I would pick Main Khiladi Tu Anari, Yeh Dillagi... then there was Hum Saath Saath Hain, which was a bit boring and bit sweet... and then odd films like Kachche Dhaage, Dil Chahta Hai, Hum Tum, Salaam Namaste, Kal Ho Naa Ho... Love Aaj Kal, Cocktail, Race follow, and finally now it is Sacred Games. I am an instinctive actor; when I get frustrated and distracted, I don’t act well. I didn’t realise this back then; I used to think it’s a bad day but it wasn’t. Now I can analyse better.

You have also stepped back from stardom, refused to carry on the burdens and pressure it brings, and retreated into your own world as it were. Was this reconciliation difficult?

Not at all and I am happy being the way I am. I think this is also something to do with my father and the kind of impression he made on us. He never liked the run and chase of life. He hated flights and loved the pace of a leisurely train journey. He worked out his own pace in the scheme of things and savoured life in its richness. I am still looking for a picture of him where he’s throwing his cap on a rolling cricket ball rather than running after it. The point is, I define my own space and comfort zone. And I am very happy to retreat into my library, read the whole day, have some lively conversations, and do some gardening in Pataudi. I have seen my grandmother graft such lovely roses there. I want to be at peace with myself. 

I’m almost arrogant about what my own beliefs are. I’m not carried away by any system or impressed easily. I need to know what the truth is in terms of “this is how the day should be spent, this is quality time, this is work, this is manipulation and this is exploitation” and “this is too much”. I don’t want to live like this. If somebody says you need to do 14 hours a day, I don’t want to live like that. Period.

You may be able to step back but now the arclights are on your children, Sarah, who is about to make her debut, and Taimur, who is the nation’s darling. It’s a fiercely competitive industry and as a father, who has been through it, what are your wise words?

As far as Sarah is concerned, she has gone into it with full knowledge. And she is loving it. She’s a brilliant girl, loves academics but genuinely wants to do this. So she’s 100 per cent committed to her work and won’t need me too much to handle herself. Taimur has been exposed early enough but we have ensured that relationship with the Press is quite healthy. The paparazzi don’t jump on the car or bully us; they just take a picture from a distance. We keep it very real with Taimur, trying to explain things. This kind of fame one shouldn’t take too seriously and it’s up to us as parents to ensure that they don’t get carried away with the adulation. We should tell them that a picture in the newspaper is not a sign of success, especially when you are getting it because of reflected glory. It’s flat tillyou earn things yourself.