Something old, something new — that’s what Haiwaan represents to Priyadarshan. If the thriller is the filmmaker’s eighth outing with Akshay Kumar, it also marks his maiden collaboration with Saif Ali Khan. And the more the filmmaker is seeing Haiwaan’s rushes as he cuts the trailer, the more he is convinced that he couldn’t have asked for better performers to bring his cat-and-mouse game to life.
Playing a blind man couldn’t have been easy for Khan. Talking to mid-day, Priyadarshan said that he was impressed by how seamlessly the actor slipped into the role with no training. “No training, nothing,” emphasised the director before adding, “While we were discussing his character, Saif asked me how he should play the role. I told him that the day we start shooting, I’d tell him. On the first day on set when he came to me, I told him to open his eyes, and without blinking, to think that he cannot see. Saif told me that he had never heard such a simple explanation before.”
Priyadarshan
In Khan, the filmmaker found a curious child, ever ready with questions. “Like my granddaughter, Saif has questions every moment,” laughed Priyadarshan. “Saif is wonderful to work with because he is so transparent. I’ve handled easy-going actors like Suniel Shetty, Shah Rukh Khan, and Akshay, and the most difficult ones like Govinda, Salman Khan, and Akshaye Khanna, but I never had any problem. Once a director shows his actors that he knows what he is doing, they trust him completely.”
Working with Kumar came easy to Priyadarshan after seven movies. However, unlike their past comedies, Haiwaan sees the superstar as a ruthless villain. Priyadarshan elaborated, “Akshay’s character is not grey; he is a psycho in Haiwaan. Akshay and I trust each other so much that he never asked me any questions. He just did what I asked him to do.”
Rumours suggest that Malayalam superstar Mohanlal has a cameo in ‘Haiwaan’