Rajkummar Rao: “I Take Inspiration For My Characters From Real-Life People”

Rajkummar Rao is one of those new-gen actors who has very quickly created a niche for himself with his unconventional choice of roles and his easy portrayal of the characters that he plays in films. And that is exactly why his characters from films like Stree, Bareilly Ki Barfi and most recently Made In China feel so real and surreal.

And now, the Newton actor has finally revealed how he prepares for these kinds of roles and the places that he finds inspirations from while prepping. Speaking to BT in his recent interview, Rajkummar said, “I pick up a lot from life. The way I say ‘Hello!’ in ‘Bareilly Ki Barfi‘, that’s how my brother-in-law speaks. Whenever I called him, he would say ‘Hello’ in that typical style of his and I found it very fascinating. So I decided that I was going to use that for one of my characters. Then I used to travel from Gurgaon in Haryana Roadways buses to do theatre in Delhi and you meet so many kinds of people there. I used to have this diary, in which I would make notes whenever I found someone interesting.”

The Shahid actor further revealed that he found inspiration for his character of Stree from a bus conductor he once had an encounter with! Yes, you read that! Revealing what transpired, Rajkummar said, “This one time, I saw a conductor who would keep saying ‘ Theek, theek, theek, theek’. He would say, ‘Kahan jaana hai aapko, Dhaula Kuan? Theek, theek, theek, theek’. I used that in ‘Stree‘ much later.”

On the professional front, Rajkummar Rao has horror-comedy RoohiAfza alongside Jhanvi Kapoor in the pipeline. The actor is also looking forward to Hansal Mehta’s Turram Khan which also features Nushrat Bharucha.

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