Aditya Uppal, known for his role as Omar Haider in ‘Dhurandhar’, is soaking up the praise for his performance. After eight long years of auditions and hardships, he secured the kind of breakout part that aspiring actors covet. In the franchise, he embodies a Lyari Task Force officer, briefly featured in the first film, but central to ‘Dhurandhar 2’, where his character sparks a major plot twist. Recently, the actor shared insights on shooting the intense torture scene involving Ranveer Singh‘s Hamza Ali Mazari.Dhurandhar 2 Movie Review
Aditya Uppal on the harsh questioning
A key scene for his character is the harsh questioning part, where Omar tortures Hamza. On Faridoon Shahryar’s podcast, Aditya talked about it, “I was not aware of the sequence actually. When the script came, it mentioned that I go into the lockup and interrogate him. Sometimes scenes can be deceptive—you read the lines and imagine doing them a certain way, but when you reach the set, with the ambience and everything, you realise there are a lot of technicalities involved. This scene involved many technical aspects, and I had to be mindful of several things. The first thing was that I was extremely careful not to hurt Ranveer.”
Aditya Uppal on real hits
Aditya shared that he did land real hits on Ranveer in the scene, explaining how he teamed up with the action crew to pull it off both safely and realistically. He said, “There was no other action scene for me except this one, so with Aejaz bhai, who was the action director, I had to work on how it would play out—how much I could hit him and which areas were safe so that he wouldn’t actually get hurt. But my first two or three shots were cut because when you’re new to action, you tend to be extra careful. So Aditya sir told me, ‘You have to go all out, you have to really hit.’ Ranveer bhai also said, ‘Aditya, hit me hard, just go for it.’ I told him I might not be able to do it in one shot.”Uppal further revealed, “It’s a stick with metal attached to it, so it required a lot of preparation. Aejaz bhai told me that if I didn’t actually hit Ranveer, the shot wouldn’t have the impact it needed. In the scene, he is tied up, and my intent was that this is a man I’ve been searching for so long, and now that he’s in my hands, I don’t want to let him go. Because of him, I lost my mentor. So I wanted to be as brutal as possible.”
Aditya Uppal thanks Ranveer Singh
He expressed gratitude to Ranveer for his hands-on direction during the shoot, “Big thanks to Ranveer Singh for supporting me. He even stopped me during the scene and guided me—where to hold him, how to grab his beard, how much pressure to apply. He told me that he trains every day in the gym for 15–20 minutes specifically for this action, so he was already prepared for it. He knew I would hit him and told me to go all out. We shot that around 3:30 in the morning.”
Aditya Uppal on Sanjay Dutt funeral
The actor opened up about shooting the funeral scene with Sanjay Dutt, admitting he had almost no idea about the plot’s direction back then. He explained that directors simply described it as a highly emotional beat, so he played it that way. Yet, upon seeing it on the big screen later, he ended up chuckling right alongside the theater crowd, much to his surprise. He shared, “It was my first day in Amritsar, when I had to do Sanjay Dutt’s funeral scene, where I salute standing in front of his body. I had to come and place a rose, and that was my first scene where I met the director, Aditya Dhar. I shot for Dhurandhar 2 first and had no idea where the script was going. I shot the part when I had no reference for where I was coming from. So before doing this entire sequence, I was extremely nervous, and I was told it was a serious scene. And you see that salute—it comes at the ‘Tamma Tamma’ beat. I was so serious, I had tears in my eyes in the scene, but in the theatre I was laughing in the audience with everyone, because I kept thinking that people were laughing at it. As an actor, my intent while performing that scene was completely different—that people would connect with the feeling that I had lost my boss, since I had no context—but it turned out to be something else entirely.”
Aditya Uppal reveals script secrecy
Uppal also revealed that the movie’s script was a closely guarded secret on set. He explained getting just the essentials for his own parts, what to do, without any insight into the full plot or overall story.
