In his 13-year-long career, actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui has played some of the most challenging characters that Bollywood has seen. However, by his own admission, none of his previous characters have been as emotionally and physically taxing as that of dreaded, real life serial killer Raman Raghav, who bludgeoned at least 40 people to death on Mumbai’s roads in the 1960s.
While he isn’t one to shy away from challenges, Nawaz admits that with Raman Raghav 2.0 he may have bitten off more than he could chew. Speaking out against the emotional toil that method acting puts one through, Nawaz says, “Every time I spoke his (Raman) lines or carried out his horrible acts of violence for the camera, I felt almost corrupted and compromised. It was as if something died inside me. I used to think, ‘how could I be speaking and acting to portray a man who was so reprehensible?’”
However, it wasn’t just emotional toil, as Nawaz says that playing his character made him physically ill as well. “I ended up in a hospital. I felt that suffocated. And one day I just fell unconscious while doing a scene. When I was taken to the hospital I was told that I was muttering Raman’s lines in a semi-conscious state.”
After this ordeal, Nawaz says he will never take up a character that’s so depraved again.
However, Nawaz is not the first actor to go through this difficulty. Veteran actor Dilip Kumar, who Nawaz considers his idol, went through the same plight after playing the maniacally depressive Devdas, and even had to seek psychiatric help to snap out of his suicidal melancholy. Point this out to him and Nawaz says, “I am aware of what Dilip sahab went through. In fact, after Devdas, he took up light-hearted roles in Azad and Kohinoor to snap out of it. I, too, am doing Sohail Khan’s Ali next and I think that will be the perfect stress-buster.”
