After doing the international rounds, Ishwak Singh and Aparshakti Khurana starrer Berlin made its way to India recently at the Red Lorry Film Festival, and Singh feels excited to bring it home. He says, “There are a lot of nuances and references in the film that your people get more than the diaspora or people overseas. There is a lot of nostalgia in the film and I saw people gasping on it and getting moved by that.”
The actor plays a deaf man in the espionage thriller and he shares that he wanted to keep the portrayal sensitive as he got trained in sign language. “Maybe it wasn’t echoing in my head all the time, but it was important for me to be respectful to the community I was representing. I wanted to reach a stage where sign would be my preferred source of communication. It was quite moving to get to know what the plight of the deaf community is,” he says, adding that his greatest validation came when deaf people in the audience appreciated him. He informs, “In London and LA, I remember meeting people who were moved by the authenticity of the content and the message we put across.”
Be it Paatal Lok, Rocket Boys or Berlin, Singh’s biggest successes have come in two-hero projects. Mention that and he says, “It’s always a two-person thing. Instead of romance, I have bromance. It’s the story that matters and actually, you can never be the only actor in a project. I believe in the more, the merrier.”
Singh started his acting journey with smaller roles in films like Veere Di Wedding. Today, he is leading projects from the front. Ask him about this journey and he says, “It is very fulfilling because it has been an uphill task. But this is the journey that I wanted. I wanted to start small and come up gradually. If you’d ask me when I started, I would’ve said it is wishful thinking, but it happened. It’s also probably because of the kind of role models I had, they have all been through this journey, even Shah Rukh Khan.”
Singh received the Best Actor award at Stars Asian International Film Festival (SAIFF) for Berlin in Los Angeles last year and he calls it like “a pat on the back” for his work. He even acknowledges the effect of this international recognition. “It’s not like you will be bombarded by calls the next day. It’s slow gratification and when I meet people who I want to work with, they are equally interested in working with me,” he says, adding that now he is excited to return with Paatal Lok 2, a show that he claims “changed everything for me”. “It was my second birth in the industry. I am excited about returning with it as it has been a spiritual journey since that show,” he ends.
