Ranbir Kapoor: 'Sanju Not A Propaganda Film'

Ranbir Kapoor talks about the challenges he faced while portraying Sanjay Dutt in the biopic Sanju 

- Priyanka Bhadani

 Munnabhai MBBS, often credited as the film that turned around Sanjay Dutt’s image, had been offered to quite a few actors before Dutt. Director Rajkumar Hirani’s first choice was Anil Kapoor, while Dutt was supposed to do a cameo. When producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra called him to tell him that he is doing Munnabhai MBBS, Dutt said he was already doing it (the cameo). When Chopra offered him the lead role, his reaction was not of jubilation, but of concern that he would now be tied-up in a longer schedule.

Hirani recalled the incident sitting in his office ahead of the release of his fifth film, Sanju, a biopic on Dutt, starring Ranbir Kapoor. Opposed to Dutt’s self-effacing and whimsical image, Kapoor is earnest, and takes his work too seriously. But, he was always the first choice for the biopic. No other name struck the makers, even though Kapoor was not sure if a film like this could be made.

“How can you make a biopic on an actor who is still so prominent, still so famous and still acting in films,” Kapoor wonders. “My personality is very different from his. How can you make a biopic, how can you make it in a two-hour format?” But, when he read the script, “all those fears went away”.

It was just last year that Kapoor said that he cannot ever be as upfront and honest as his father has been in his book Khullam Khulla, or as Sanjay Dutt has been for his biopic. Dutt, over many sessions, bared his life in front of Hirani and his writing partner, Abhijat Joshi. But, there is a visible change in him. That he didn’t look in your eyes while talking to you has been a topic of discussion among scribes. But here, sitting on a couch right across me, he looks me in the eye. When you point this change to him, he says, “As long as it’s a good change, I am happy.”