All the hard work on and off the field has paid off for Sushant Singh Rajput, who saw his film M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story opening to smashed records this week. Evidently thrilled at the response to his film, the actor says, “It’s all because of Dhoni’s amazing reach and popularity. I’ve never seen this kind of response for any of my other films.”
If you have seen the film, you have seen the massive transformation that the actor has gone through physically, for the role. “I’ve got a lot of reactions for that. We shot the later portions of Dhoni’s life first — that’s when I weighed 80 kilos. I shed around 20 kgs to look like the teenager Dhoni.”
Director Neeraj Pandey says Sushant was particular about him looking a certain way to pull off Dhoni’s role. “Weight loss and some CGs helped us get the right look for Dhoni’s former years. In fact, almost all of what you see me do on screen as Dhoni is actually done by me, except when I am shown interacting with other real-life cricketers on the field. That’s been done by special effects.”
Lapping up the praise coming his way, he adds, “Now when I have audiences telling me that I’ve got Dhoni’s style and other nuances off the field right, I feel relieved. Sometimes, I also wonder what would have happened if they’d rejected me.”
