‘This Is What a Real-Life Hero Should Be Like’

Manoj Bajpayee is playing former RBI Governor A. Ramanan, who tackled the economic crisis in the 1990s. He talks of how he tackled the role in Governor.

How challenging was it to play a real-life hero and that too from the 1990s?

Whichever role you do, there is always a struggle and a challenge, because it’s a new role. In this case, there’s a financial backdrop and we’re talking about a time and character from a different region. So, not only do you have to justify the role in the script, but you also have to give some kind of rootedness to it. Economics is not a subject I could ever understand.

How did you get to the core of your character?

There is always an emotional graph that one works on. I just hope that people like what they see on the screen.

What, according to you, should be the criteria for on-screen heroism?

I’m playing the main protagonist on whose work in the 90s as an RBI Governor we are focusing on in the film. I think heroes are meant to be like this.

You recently made a statement on the inflated budgets of big-ticket films. Were you alluding to particular films?

I was not talking about anything in particular. The only thing I was saying is, there is a relationship between the audience and the film and money should not come in between them….how much money it has made or not made, how much money was spent to make the film – all of this is not something that should come between the audience and the film.