A major reason why Aditya Dhar’s film Dhurandhar The Revenge has managed to win the audience over, apart from the peak detailing, is the fact that every actor in the team played their character to perfection. May it be Ranveer Singh as Hamza aka Jaskirat or Akshaye Khanna as Rehman Dakait. Actor Arjun Rampal, known as one of the most handsome men on earth, dropped jaws with his transformation onscreen and his brutal portrayal of ISI’s Major Iqbal. Well, at a recent award show, Arjun revealed how Dhurandhar was his revenge.
One of the most talked about sequences of Dhurandhar was the red screen scene. While Ranveer Singh as Hamza held himself together, Akshaye Khanna and Arjun Rampal’s characters celebrated the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which took place in 2008. Arjun, who was recently honoured with an award for Outstanding Performance of the Year at Hello! Hall of Fame Awards, revealed what he was doing in reality during the attacks. Arjun shared, “On November 26, 2008, I was in this hotel (Four Seasons, Worli). I’d come to pick up my friends, and we were on our way to the Taj because we were going there to celebrate my birthday. 26/11 also happens to be my birthday. And we were going to go there, and there was… one guy was getting ready… God bless him. We were at the bar, we ordered a drink, and the first bomb went off near Mahim. I heard that sound, and my glass shook and rattled. We were like ‘What the hell was that?’ In 10 minutes, our phones were ringing, and everybody said there’s some gang war that has broken out in Colaba, so don’t come there. In 20 to 30 minutes, the whole Four Seasons was cordoned off.”
Arjun was given a suite in the hotel and was allowed to stay there for the night, because the hotel management couldn’t let anyone go out as it was not safe. Arjun remembered, “On my birthday, I saw the horrors of the 26/11 attacks play out. In the morning, when I drove back home, I had to stop at least three times because I thought I was going to be sick. When Aditya Dhar narrated to me the 26/11 scene, I knew I was going to have my revenge, and that’s what I did with Dhurandhar. I’m really sorry I abused India so much in the movie, but I’m a patriot at heart. All I want to say is Bharat Mata Ki Jai.”
Last month in an interview with Sonia Shenoy, sharing how the weight of the moment hit Akshaye Khanna and Arjun Rampal hard after the camera stopped rolling in that scene, R Madhavan had shared, “After that scene ended, they broke down completely. They cried uncontrollably. It wasn’t just acting for them. They have lived through those times. They have seen real incidents like that. It brought back memories. That’s when I realised this was a very special film.”
Kudos to Arjun and the team for the convincing act in this specific scene.
