Mumbai News, 11 April 2020 : The master actor Atul Srivastava is not a new name in the cinema industry as he has been here for a long time, as an actor, he has been part of super hit movies like “Luka Chuppi, Stree, Lage Raho Munnabhai and Toilet – Ek Prem Katha” to name a few. He has proved himself to be a versatile actor time and again.
Atul Shrivastava says that Varadraj is a very sensitive filmmaker and I know him since the days of Manjhi-The Mountain Man. What I wanted to do, Varadraj ‘s project was fit in that.
Varadraj says that he had established relations with Atul Srivastava a long time back as I knew him from the days of Prithvi Theater. He was fit for the character, I wanted in Kabaad- The Coin and I was confident that Atul would do full justice to the character as he is one of the most talented artists of Indian cinema. I went to him with the script and gave him the narration after which he saw the scope in the character and said yes for the film. I explained him about the detailing of character and about the workshop. On hearing about the details he said that, ” I will do the workshops my way and I will not disappoint you.” Then I prepared a character sketch and sent it to him. Atul ji started the workshop without informing me and I was worried whether he would be able to justify his character or not. I thought that he will come directly to the set for playing the character; it would be extremely time consuming to explain the character to him again.
One day Atul ji sent a video to Shahzad in which he was sitting in front of the cobbler. When I called him and asked him, he said that he was doing this to conduct his workshop in a natural manner. He also stated that he went to several types of cobblers and he used to talk to them for long hours. He said that he has found a cobbler and had developed a bond of friendship with him, he meets him daily, has discussed with him, and tries to understand the different layers of his psychology. Suddenly one day, Atul ji came to the office without any information and said some famous dialogues from the script. On seeing his fantastic and spontaneous dialogue delivery, I was speechless.
Atul Srivastava says that Varadraj had created a lot pressure on me for this character and I had a strong feeling that I won’t be able to play the character with perfection as before this I had never played the character of a cobbler. I was extremely scared to play this character and this was the reason that I had put in a lot of preparation for making this character appear realistic. Afterwards, Varadraj and Shahzad gave finishing touches to the character and gave me some suggestions to avoid overacting, which led to the betterment of the character. For this, I am thankful to Varadraj and Shahzad.
Varadraj says that the best quality of Atul Srivastava is that he plays the character with full involvement. I was created a his shop on footpath, it was running road, we were shooting, suddenly middle in the shot, a woman came to the cobbler to get her slippers stitched. Atul ji immediately took control of the situation and to the surprise of the entire unit of film, he stitched the slippers in a few minutes. I was amazed on seeing this level of natural acting.
Atul Srivastava says that he was extremely satisfied on working with Varadraj and his unit. He also said that Varadraj has an innate quality of giving different shapes to situations; there are very few filmmakers that understand this.
Varadraj Swami stated that, ” Kabaad- The Coin revolves around the human psychology related to money. In today’s fast paced world, everyone is running after money & everyone feel that money is everything. There is a strange assumption that if someone has money, then his life is successful & if someone doesn’t have money, then he is a loser. So, the desperation of humans to attain money has been showcased in the story of this movie.
