Indian National Award-winning actor-producer Arjun Rampal, who is getting a positive response for Daddy, says getting the physical resemblance right for his forthcoming film, based on gangster-turned-politician Arun Gawli, was important for him. Rampal is the co-writer and producer of the film as well.
Asked if he was the obvious choice for the character, Rampal said: “Getting the look right was very important for me. I wouldn’t have done Daddy as an actor if I failed the look-test. So after the writing was done, the scary part came — the look test. I told Ashim [Ahluwalia] that if my look-test is miserable, I will still produce the film, Ashim will still direct it, and we will get another actor who would look like Arun Gawli.”
While the actor used a prosthetic nose to get the facial resemblance correct, there had to be a physical transformation as well.
Talking about it, he said: “I am playing a real-life character, so the first thing for me was to look like him. I did not go to the gym for two years and stopped lifting weight to lose 20kg, as I had muscle. For the character, I had to look thin. Such physical transformation along with the production design through which Ashim created the world of Arun Gawli...It helped me as a performer.”
Daddy is about a man who was for a long time associated with major kidnappings, extortions, contract killings and other major crimes in Mumbai. Always seen with a Gandhi cap, Gawli was elected legislator in the 2004 assembly elections and continued to be one until 2009. In 2008, he was nabbed for Shiv Sena corporator Kamlakar Jamsandekar’s murder along with over a dozen associates.
The film is releasing on July 21.
