Mumbai: For a particular scene in Hansal Mehta’s film City Lights, Rajkummar Rao had to act as a drunken man. The scene has him visit a bar, get sloshed and arrive home dead drunk. Rajkummar, who is a non-alcoholic in real life, decided to take to the bottle in a bid to bring credibility to his performance.
“I don’t drink, but I didn’t want to fake it. So I asked Hansal, who is experienced in these matters, on what drink I should be having. On his advice, I started off with vodka. I had about two pegs but nothing happened. Then I started downing a few more and after about five or six pegs, I was completely gone,” says the National Award-winning actor.
So a dead drunk Rajkummar had to go home and pick a fight with his onscreen wife Patralekha. The scary part here was that the entire shoot sequence was unfolding on the eighth floor and Rajkummar was scared that he would lose control and fall.
“After drinking so much, I had no control. We were shooting on the eighth floor and there was always an element of scariness. Finally, after pack up, I had to get the entire alcohol out of my system,” Rajkummar recalls.
