For Sushant Singh Rajput, it is time for leap of generations that could fracture any actor's performing abilities.
But Sushant, who with just three films, has prepared a roster of character-portraits rather than star-vehicles for his career, is all set to make a 110-year journey in the course of two films.
While in Dibakar Banerjee's Detective Byomkesh Bakshy , Sushant Singh Rajput plays a detective in Kolkata in the 1940s, in Shekhar Kapoor's Paani, he is cast as a ghetto-boy from Mumbai in the year 2050.
The cultural and chronological leap is tremendous. And Sushant is revelling in every bit of the challenge.
Says Sushant, "I'm ready to make a 110-year leap from my last film to the next. In Detective Byomkesh Bakshy though, I had to go back in time to the 1940s, I had solid reference points. I watched a lot of films from that era. Then of course, Dibakar was there to guide me. With Paani , there are no reference points. I've the freedom to interpret my character in any way I like. In the rehearsals and workshops, Shekhar Kapoor has allowed me complete freedom to do what I like with the character. Such supreme freedom is also a kind of captivity, as you tend to go overboard. With Shekhar's help, I am trying to make my character in Paani believable." About his very unorthodox selection of roles...as an aspiring cricketer in his large-screen debut in Kai Po Che , a horny wastrel in Shuddh Desi Romance , a 1940s' detective in Detective Byomkesh Bakshy and a ghetto-Romeo in futuristic Mumbai in Paani, Sushant says the irregular is the regular for him. "I don't think I'd be comfortable playing the typical lover-boy romancing pretty girls in designer clothes. I'd die if I've to play stereotypical characters. I may fail with some of my unconventional choices. But I'd rather die with spectacular failures than mediocre successes."