Vijay Varma On Playing The Sleazy Gangster In She

In  the  Netflix  film She , the Gully Boy actor  Vijay Varma is cast as a low-level sleazy gangster who  repeatedly abuses  the  female  protagonist.

How  difficult was it for  Vijay to play this vile  character? “Well,  the female police officer was subjected to certain kind of abuse which was part of the plot. But the real discovery for me in this show is how  an individual’s  sexuality can be discovered in extremely unlikely circumstances and it is something that we don’t want to talk about .And there is very little discussion around it in the mainstream films. But if you observe the work of Saddat Hassan Manto, or if you read   some  Western writers, they have dwelled into these kinds of scenarios . I have been an avid follower  of all these writers .It can be very unsettling and uncomfortable. But but does it  not  happen? Yes, is it part of our social circle.  Is it a part of our environment? Yes. Is it very problematic? Yes. But don’t we need to talk about it? We should talk about it.We must!”

  Vijay agrees his character  Sasya in  She is  a sociopath. “It is  an extremely repellent character. It does everything that a decent humanbeing wouldn’t do .But at the same time the offer came from Imtiaz  Ali and  he’s been  part of stories and he’s told stories that are full of passion and love and a sense of self-discovery. So I felt that this story and Imtiaz Ali are the two  different opposites and it’ll be interesting to be in the middle of it.Also,   sometimes a  character that comes to you does not excite you. It  does not draw you  in  .It does not make you feel that you can do it, but it challenges you. So I was literally  felt challenged into exploring if I can do something like this. At  the same time I felt  that’s a real representation of a certain kind of dominance that  that a twisted man would have on a woman , something similar to  what I would say Kabir Singh was but but not in  exactly the  same way. When you see real truth in  characters  I feel there is a certain kind of liberation. Even if you don’t like my character , and  the idea is that you shouldn’t like it , somehow you can  feel that   a despicable  person like this can really exist and does exist.”

 There is  currently  a lot  of  activity  on the web space, not all of it productive or desirable.

Says  Vijay, “ I feel like the cinema space the web space is also being used  for both the  good and the bad. There are good stories being told in cinema and there are terrible stories being told in cinema and there are good stories being told on digital platforms and there are  terrible stories being told on on digital platforms. So it is really subjective.”

Speaking on  his forthcoming  projects Vijay says,  “Well my forthcoming projects are A Suitable  Boy  which  Mira Nair is  directing  for BBC as  a  miniseries.And then there is another  miniseries  with Anand Gandhi , a sci-fi comedy on Hotstar starring me and Radhika Apte .I am  also doing the series  Fallen with Sonakshi Sinha.  Then there are  a couple of films .One is Hurdang with Sailesh R Singh producing it  .The   film Bamfaad with Paresh Rawalji’s son Aditya making his  debut, was  released on the steaming platform recently.And my work in it has been appreciated. So I  guess there’s a lot happening in my career.”