'I am the new Gabbar Singh and Mogambo'

'THINGS HAVE CHANGED OVERNIGHT AFTER ANIMAL.'

“I can’t play caricature villains. I don’t want to do that. I was offered some big film recently where I was asked to play uni-dimensional villains. I said no,”

Your journey from Barasat to Animal is worthy of a film?

Ha ha, you’ve seen me go through the best, then the worst. I just feel like I am living a dream.

Your father (the legendary Dharmendra) is very proud of you?

He is. I feel this is the year of the Deols. Our fans were waiting for us to make them proud, and I think we have.

Even when you were not doing well, you had a huge following on social media.

I know! I was the Meme specialist. I didn’t even know what memes meant.

One fan from Pakistan started a worldwide fan club. My fans were called Bobbyians(laughs).

The Pakistani fan’s Instagram page was called Bobbywood (laughs).

Just goes to show that you remained relevant even when your films were not doing well?

It was just that I chose the wrong projects. This can happen to anyone, that it happened to me was just my luck.

But the one person who believed in me

was Prakashji (Jha). When he offered me Ashram I was like, ‘My God!’

When I went to meet him I was very excited. In my 26 years as an actor we came close to working together before, but it never materialised.

When he narrated Ashram, I thought he would offer me the cop’s character which Darshan Kumar eventually played. He said, ‘Main chahta hoon aap Baba ka role karen.’

How on earth did he imagine you as that slimy Baba?